Eight sighs. “You know,” he says, “you’re not helping things here.”
He’s probably right. On the other hand, from our perspective at least, there’s almost certainly no way to make things worse. We get to our feet, and we go.
* * *
HE DOESN’T TAKE us to the cycler. He takes us four doors down the corridor, and sticks us in another room about the size of a storage closet.
“What’s this?” I ask.
He shrugs. “A storage closet.”
He shoves us inside, then closes the door behind us. The room is dark. My ocular flips over to infrared, but I’d just as soon get some sleep at this point, so I flip it back. I hunch down in one corner and rest my forehead on my knees. I’m just drifting off when a chat window opens.
<Mickey8>:Ab**st nder**nd?
I flip my ocular back to IR and look up at Eight. He’s in the opposite corner, hunched over just like me. He’s already snoring.
<Mickey8>:Un***st**d
Ugh. He’s sleep-texting. I blink the chat widow closed, shut my ocular down, and close my eyes.
* * *
I HAVE NO idea how long it’s been when I wake to a flood of light from the open door. A new goon has come for us. This one I recognize. His name is Lucas. I used to see him in the carousel during transit, practicing some sort of martial art in extreme slow motion. I once asked him what the point of that was. I mean, isn’t the whole key to winning a fight being faster than the other guy? He smiled and shook his head, and proceeded on to the next form.
He’s always struck me as a decent sort, but he doesn’t look happy to be dealing with us this morning.
“Hey,” he says. “You’re in some trouble here, Mickey.”
“Yeah,” Eight says. “We gathered.”
“What happened to you, homes? How the hell did you wind up a multiple?”
“Long story,” I say. “The short answer, though, is that this is all Berto’s fault.”
He laughs. “Should have known. Gomez is a piece of work. I never understood why you spent so much time with him.”
“Yeah,” Eight says. “I’ve been wondering that myself lately.”
“Oh well,” Lucas says. “Best get to your feet now. The big man wants to see you.”
* * *
“GOOD LORD, BARNES,” Marshall says. “Despite everything, I didn’t want to believe it.”
I decide not to ask what he means by “despite everything.”
We’re back in his office again, sitting in the same little chairs Berto and I were in a couple of days ago. The past forty-eight hours don’t seem to have improved Marshall’s mood.
“Look,” Eight says. “I know this seems bad, sir, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the world. I get that there shouldn’t be two of us right now, but you know we didn’t do it deliberately. And anyway, in some ways this is a good thing. The colony is barely at viability as it is, and the two of us can be twice as useful. At the end of the day, you need us. You need to let this slide.”
Marshall’s face reddens, and his jaw works silently for a long two seconds before he surges to his feet and slams his fists down onto his desk.
“Listen to me, you goddamned abomination! I don’t give a shit about deliberately! Set aside the fact that you’ve stolen seventy kilos of vital calcium and proteins from a colony that’s on the brink of starvation. Set aside the fact that one of you should have gone back into the cycler the goddamned second that you realized that you’d become a multiple. For the love of all that’s holy, Barnes, you were having relations with one another. I don’t … I…”
He sputters to a stop, then drops back into his chair. He takes a deep breath in, closes his eyes, and then lets it out slowly. When he opens them again, his expression is as blank as a mannequin’s.
“You are a monster,” Marshall says, his voice low and even, “and you are both going into the cycler. The only point of this discussion, the only questions we are trying to answer, are whether there will ever be a ninth iteration of you, and whether Adjaya should go down the corpse hole with you.”
Eight’s face goes slack at that, and I can feel my eyes widen.
“Sir,” Eight says. “Please—”
“Nasha didn’t know,” I say. “I mean, she didn’t know until I walked in on her with Eight, just before Security showed up to haul us away. You can’t blame her, sir. This wasn’t her fault.”
“I’ve already spoken with Adjaya,” Marshall says. “She claims that she did know, in fact. She claims that she realized something was off with you two days ago. She also let me know that what she was doing with the two of you is none of my goddamned business, and that I can shove my bullshit Natalist morality all the way up my ass sideways.” He pauses for another deep, cleansing breath. “If she weren’t one of our two qualified combat pilots, and if we were not currently facing the possibility of combat against hostile native sentients, she would have been gone already.”
“Wait,” Eight says. “What?”
“The prize you brought home from your snipe hunt two nights ago,” Marshall says, “was not fully biological. The things you’ve been calling ‘creepers’ appear to actually be some sort of hybrid miltech. We suspected as much, of course, based on what they were able to do to the decking in the main lock, but our examination of the specimen has confirmed it. We are now on a war footing, which means that I’m going to have to think long and hard about what to do about Adjaya.” He leans back in his chair, squeezes his eyes shut, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Fortunately, I have no similar issues with the two of you.” He gestures toward Lucas, who’s been waiting just inside the door. “Take them to holding, please. I have a few more people I need to speak with. We’ll sort them out when I’m done.”
* * *
SO, FUN FACT: it turns out we do have a jail.
* * *
“WELL,” EIGHT SAYS. “It’s been a nice few days, anyway.”
I get to my feet and walk the two steps from the bench to the bed. I had no idea until they tossed us in here that this colony even had a holding cell—apparently the goons who dragged us out of our room didn’t either, or they wouldn’t have risked their snack machine with us—but I guess it does. We’re in a standard three-by-two room. The only difference between this place and all the other standard three-by-two rooms under the dome is that the door on this one locks from the outside.
As far as I can tell, we’re the first two occupants it’s had since we left Midgard.
“I guess our original plan was right, huh?” I drop onto the bed, lie back, and close my eyes. “You should have shoved me down the corpse hole when you had the chance. At least you would have done it headfirst.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I guess you’re right about that. You think he’s really gonna kill us both?”