The City of Cries by Catherine Asaro

Author:Catherine Asaro [Asaro, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Short Story
Amazon: B005SG660E
Publisher: Author Published
Published: 2011-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

End V

VI

Caverns

Twice in my life, I’d seen someone die by tangler fire. It wasn’t any easier to take this time than before. The drifter fell to the ground in a violent seizure as chemicals from the shot scrambled her neural system. Then she convulsed. It took several minutes for her life to end, but it seemed like eternity. I didn’t realize I’d lunged forward until my foot hit a rock and I sprawled on my stomach. The thudding of the drifter’s convulsions covered my fall; otherwise my aborted attempt to stop the murder might have ended in Scorch shooting me as well.

Scorch wasn’t done yet, either. She used the laser carbine next and incinerated the drifter’s body until nothing remained but a few ashes. Even as I watched, the breezes stirred them into the air. It wouldn’t be long before they dispersed altogether.

Without a backward look, Scorch boarded the flycar. Within seconds it was soaring in the sky, headed back to Cries.

I didn’t move at first. Even after my years in the army, I had never become inured to death. When my stomach settled, I walked over to the bluff where the drifter had died. Already most of the ashes were gone. I clicked a hollow disk off my gauntlet and scraped a bit of the remaining powder into the container.

Then I headed back to Cries.

♦ ♦ ♦

“Message incoming,” Max said.

I blinked, surfacing from the trance I had fallen into during my fourteen-kilometer hike across the Vanished Sea. I had just reached the outskirts of Cries.

“Message?” I asked.

“From Jak. Do you want to receive?”

“Go ahead.”

His voice growled. “Got dinner, Bhaaj. Alone.”

Damn. I had forgotten to meet him at the penthouse. “Sorry.”

“Where are you?”

“Muttering Lane.”

“Be there in—” He paused. “Three minutes.”

“Thanks.”

I kept walking through a deserted industrial district. After a while, a gorgeous black hover car edged around a dilapidated warehouse and settled on the cobblestones. I activated the dart thrower in my left gauntlet. The darts only stunned, unlike the pulse gun in my shoulder holster. You could get a license to carry darts or a pulse gun—but not a tangler. Never a tangler. Police hated them. You couldn’t trace the damn shot. They also killed slow and torturously. Darts only stunned, and with a pulse gun it was over in a fraction of a second. I didn’t want to blast anyone, just protect myself.

When Jak jumped down from the car, I deactivated the dart thrower. I walked up to him and put my arms around his waist. He held me, my head against his shoulder.

“Want to tell me about it?” he asked.

“Not now.” I let him go. “Take me home?”

“Yeah.”

I slid into the passenger seat and he took the driver’s side. Not that it mattered where we sat; he entered our destination into the car and let it take us back to my place. The rich upholstery, sleek black leather, shifted under me, trying futilely to ease my tension.

“I don’t think I’m hungry for dinner,” I said.

Jak was watching me.

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