Fade Away and Radiate (3 page)

Annie’s dinner congealed into a hard,
cold pit in her stomach. “Nice little felony you committed there,
Murph. And don't you realize they have a whole Sheriff's division
at FortuneCorp that'll trace your virtual tracks and hunt you down
in the meatworld?”

Billy's smile got small and quiet and
dangerous. “It was worth it, Annie. I found out who killed Roberto
in the database, too – the information was right in his dossier. In
yours.”

The silence thundered between
them.

“
Don't worry about me. I
have my ways of getting in and out of virtual space alive. My
contacts. My brothers.”

Annie nodded at him, numb to her bones.
“So you know who killed him.”

“
You want to
know.”

“
I'm not so sure. What can I
do about it, even if I do know?”

Billy didn't answer her. Instead, he
guzzled the rest of his own protein gel and crushed the titanium
can between his fingers. He kept crushing it into a tiny cube, as
Annie watched.

“
Once I found out where you
were and who killed Roberto, I had to find you,” he
said.

“
So here I am, you found
me,” she said, a little waver in her voice. “Growing this ball of
ice into something habitable.”

Billy turned his head to look at the
flimsy synthwood door to the hut, and Annie knew he could look
right through it with his modified eyes. “That Bowman eco-drive is
incredible. No other worldcorp has technology anything like it, not
yet anyway. You grew a whole world.”

“
Well, a few hundred square
meters worth. But we have to make it more than a few kliks wide for
a colony to settle here and get to work. The precious metals frozen
inside the ice are worth trillions. Once it's habitable, we can
extract that ore and conquer the whole quadrant. We can use this as
a regional base.”

She still spoke of “we,” what she and
FortuneCorp could do together. It was a habit she had, maybe a bad
one, but she wanted to belong to something – anything that was
bigger than her and her fears.

Billy kept staring at the door, and
didn’t look away even when Annie dared to touch his shoulder. When
he didn’t respond to her, she squinted at the door as if she could
see through it too, through sheer orneriness.

Nope.

Before she could say anything, Billy
whispered directly into her mind:

What’s that?

Those two little words sparked the
shakes in her, from deep inside, working out to the tips of her
fingers, to the ends of her hair. For two reasons.

One, Billy spoke directly into her
mind. How did he do that? She wasn’t genmod in any way. Not even
Roberto could do it, whisper into her soul. And he had
tried.

So, what just happened?

The other reason was that Billy seemed
to have seen something lurking in the jungle she’d grown, outside
the perimeter of her research hut. But she hadn’t introduced any
fauna to her flora, not yet.

So, what the bloody hell was out
there?

Billy must have picked up on her fear,
for he rose silently to his feet, and put her behind him. He took a
blaster out of his boot (so that was where it was) and walked to
the door, step by soundless step.

Once he reached the frame, he motioned
Annie back, and she decided not to argue. Before she could take
cover behind her desk, Billy reached forward lightning fast, and
swung the door open.

In a flash, Annie saw the
hummingbird-fast metal wings and screamed, “Don’t
shoot!”

Billy reached forward and pinched
Violet out of the air and into one of his big, square palms. Violet
squeaked, and the gears ground audibly in the joints of her
translucent wings.

“
That’s my lab assistant,”
Annie said, shaking so hard she reached for the top of her desk to
keep from toppling over. “Violet. That’s what I call
her.”

Billy brought the wriggling AI to her
desk, opened the roll top with an elbow, and pinned its metallic
little body against the realwood surface.

“
Looks like a killer drone
to me,” Billy growled.

“
Violet’s
FortuneCorp-issued. And yes, they make the drones. But her
directive is to assist me. She does growth measurements around the
dome’s perimeter, to see how permeable the dome membrane is at the
edges. To see if we can extend the geodome biosphere. I should’ve
warned you about her. Sorry, I’m such a ninny.”

Billy snorted at that, sighed, and let
Violet go. She buzzed on her back for a minute, like a metallic
dragonfly, and then she found her footing and swung onto her
furry-looking titanium feet.

“
What’s that?” Violet asked
in her high-pitched, buzzing voice.

Annie restrained a sigh. “This is my
old friend, Billy Murphy. He was, erm, in the neighborhood, and
decided to stop by and say hello.”

Violet’s compound eyes took in Billy
and Annie in a single glance. And for the first time, those
jeweled, all-seeing eyes unnerved her.

They seemed to see right through her.
Seemed to know who killed Roberto. And why.

But her dangerous days were done. She
was a frontier gardener now, she wanted to tell Violet. And that’s
all she wanted to be.

#

Violet joined them for the rest of
their little picnic. Billy no longer looked at Annie or said much
of anything. He just watched Violet. And Violet watched
Annie.

“
I need to return to my
monitoring duties,” Violet finally announced. “Are you sure you are
okay here, boss?”

Annie smiled at her. Oh, she knew
Violet was programmed, and didn’t grow spontaneously out of
carbon-based life, but she’d never cared. Violet knew an endless
supply of silly jokes, entertained her and diverted her through
long days of data analysis and eco-development, and heat generation
under the geodome. Violet distracted her, on long, lonely, dark
nights balanced on the edge of forever.

Her smile faded, though, as Violet’s
wings buzzed into life. For the first time, Annie saw a creature
created by FortuneCorp, one whose loyalty extended through her to
her mother – the corporation. She was programmed for Annie’s
well-being, but where Annie’s interests conflicted with
FortuneCorp’s, Violet would see her boss’s demise as in her own
best interest.

Annie was just a conduit to Violet’s
ultimate loyalty. And if she interfered with that loyalty, what
then?

But Annie only said, “Good night,
Violet. All’s well. As usual, mark me as off duty until
sunrise.”

“
Will do, boss.”

And with a buzz and blur of wings,
Violet was gone into the night.

#

“
You are in terrible
danger,” Billy whispered, after Violet was well and truly
gone.

“
I know,” Annie whispered
back.

“
No. You don't know who
killed Roberto. Who is likely to kill you, too.”

Annie was afraid to know the truth. The
truth was too horrible to hear.

Billy slid closer, put an arm around
her, and leaned his head against hers.

Warmth flooded through her, and after a
moment of basking in the pure human contact, Annie realized with a
jolt that it wasn’t just emotional warmth she felt. Her body seemed
to have connected with Billy’s. Their consciousness seemed to have
merged.

Roberto had once described the mental
union he’d felt with his team, the way the genmod made it possible
for them to fight as one. And now she felt that merging for
herself. Billy spoke into her now, the way he’d once spoken into
his team.

FortuneCorp

Was all that Billy said. He said it
into her mind.

That was all it took, to strip the
willful blindness from her eyes.

FortuneCorp.

It was FortuneCorp that had known about
her background and profited from it.

FortuneCorp, that knew she’d refused to
go off-world while Roberto still served in the Glass Desert. He was
their employee, but he was also a US citizen. He had undergone the
genmod without their express permission, and FortuneCorp knew that
not even the corporation could recall Roberto from the field of
war.

So FortuneCorp had killed
Roberto.

Not a dying radiation-poisoned
terrorist, as the government had told her. She hadn’t believed that
for a minute, but she’d assumed it was some corporate rival, some
other worldcorp, killing Roberto in country to kill his value to
his own company.

But FortuneCorp, her employer and
Roberto’s, had killed him. So that it could post her off-world like
it wanted. To test the Bowman eco-drive, gain that competitive
edge.

Now she understood. As long as she
worked on the Bowman eco-drive and asked no questions, FortuneCorp
got what it wanted out of her. But if she quit, if she betrayed the
company’s loyalty, her value to FortuneCorp was gone. And if
FortuneCorp couldn't have her talents, nobody could.

Her life was balanced on a razor’s
edge. She opened her mouth to speak, but Billy stopped her with a
kiss. A kiss so mind-blowing in its intensity that all the
devastating truth melted in its wake.

She surrendered to the fire of it, and
it burned away the fear, the grief, the pain. The “we” was gone,
was never more than a lie. Only an incandescent rage remained. And
for the first time, an acceptance of the fact that Roberto was
truly, forever, gone.

Billy whispered from inside
that fire, into her mind.
I am getting you
out of here. Alive. I swear.

Annie made a little sound, and didn’t
bother trying to get her brain cells to respond in words. Instead,
she wrapped her arms around him, and just kissed Captain Billy
Murphy back.

He caressed her gently with his
fingers, their tips feathering down the back of her neck and
against the length of her arms. With a sigh, she surrendered to
him, let the molten flood of feeling crest over all of her
defenses.

His kiss became more insistent, and she
opened her mouth to his, curling into his arms as they twined
together on the floor. She ran her fingers through that thick hair,
felt the stubble along the edge of his jaw, and that inner
sensation of openness and vulnerability was almost more than she
could bear.

She almost pulled away then, begged
off, asked for more time, made some excuse and slipped out of his
fingers. But Billy sighed too, and to her shock her heart surged
inside of her. Began beating in tandem with Billy’s heart,
throbbing together in a single rhythm.

I will never leave
you
, he whispered into her, and all she
could do was make a little sigh of gratitude in response. He kept
kissing her even as he set her full length along the ground, and
pressed his body against hers.

The warmth of him spread, and their
shared fire rose up in her. His hands found her bare skin, under
her tunic, and she trembled under his gentle but insatiable
touch.

Their hearts beat together, faster and
faster. And then, at the same moment, their eyes opened. And it was
like she was inside of Billy’s body staring back at herself. She
simultaneously looked into him, and he looked into her. This
communion was more intimate than even the act of sex; they mingled
souls as well as their bodies.

From that double vantage, she could see
what he saw when he looked at her. Feel what he felt. And the tears
sprung up in her eyes. She was beautiful!

Billy kissed Annie again, as if he
could kiss his life force right into her. She was the only woman
who could slip through his fingers and right into his heart. He’d
felt closer to her just hunting her in the cyberworld, and then the
farthest quadrants of space, than to any other woman he’d ever
known.

This little freckled blond woman, who
had run away from him to save him, had stolen his heart
forever.

Annie couldn’t get enough of his lips,
the velvet skin at the nape of his neck. She kissed down the side
of his face, and she whispered, “Just this night. And then you go.
Please.”

I will never leave
you

And she gave up trying to convince this
man, who had the force of a hurricane, to do anything he didn’t
want to do. She knew he wanted to kiss her, and for one night,
she’d gladly take every last kiss that Billy Murphy had to
give.

I’m going to take your
kisses in return, Annie. Make you mine, forever. But first I want
to make sure you are safe.

With a sigh, Annie did the thing she
never did, and accepted things for what they were. Bit by bit, her
consciousness receded from his, then with a sudden snap she was
back in her body, and Billy Murphy was back in his.

They lay together in a sweaty,
intertwined heap of longing. “I want you, so bad,” Annie
said.

“
No kidding, right?” Billy
said out loud, and laughed. “But I’m not getting naked with you, no
way tonight. By this time tomorrow, though…”