Switched: Brides of the Kindred 17 (5 page)

As Frankie watched,
someone at the front of the line apparently tried to cheat the
turnstile or get in when he wasn’t supposed to. It was a man in a
ragged brown outfit that looked like it hadn’t been washed in a
while. When he got up to the tall metal bars, instead of sliding
open for him, they stayed shut and a red light began blinking over
his head.

At once one of the
officers in black uniforms came around and dragged the man out of
the crowd, over to the side. He had some kind of silver weapon or
truncheon in his hand. Frankie saw it rise and fall and heard the
offender squealing in pain as the sudden, brutal punishment was
administered. She couldn’t stop staring but no one else in the
crowd even seemed to notice—apparently this kind of thing happened
all the time.

Frankie became
suddenly aware that she didn’t have a ticket or a card of any kind
and she was getting closer to the jail door-turnstiles all the
time. She began to panic but she was being pushed inexorably
forward by the crowd behind her which had now swelled to either
hundreds or thousands—it was very difficult to tell in the low,
underground space lit mainly by the glow of the large, flat
screens.

Up
until now, Frankie had been allowing herself to be carried along in
the momentum of the dream—because it
had
to be a dream, didn’t it? She had never been to a place like
this or seen people like these. When words scrolled by on the
bottom of the screens, she didn’t recognize the language or indeed,
even the alphabet. So she
had
to be dreaming all this, safe at home in her bed,
right?

But dream or no
dream, she didn’t wish to take a vicious beating just because she
couldn’t find her ticket. She began to fight against the crowd,
trying to get to the side, to get away from the turnstiles and
their guards.

To her surprise, she
was able to make some headway, even in the packed area. She
realized that she was taller than almost everyone here—taller and
stronger too. Which was crazy—she was always shorter than almost
everyone, not taller. And though she had worked hard on her upper
body strength in order to do the inversions and head and hand
stands required in more advanced yoga classes, she still wasn’t
strong enough to muscle her way through a packed crowd. Yet, that
was what she was doing…only not fast enough.

Before she knew it,
Frankie had come to the end of the row of turnstiles with only one
person in line in front of her. She watched to see what that
person—a girl in a dull yellow uniform jumpsuit—would do. To her
surprise, the girl simply put her hand to a black pad on the side
of the turnstile. Her hand was briefly outlined in brilliant green
light and the barred door slid open for her. Then it closed again
and suddenly Frankie was next.

She stood there,
hesitating, wondering what would happen if she pressed her hand to
the pad. She didn’t belong here—would the mechanism inside the
turnstile sense that?

The crowd behind her
was shoving forward, clearly wondering what was happening and why
they weren’t moving. But Frankie was an interloper—what if she got
shocked? Or what if the black uniformed guard who was standing to
one side grabbed her and started beating her with the long, silver
metal truncheon she saw shoved into his belt. Or what if—

“
Who are you?”

Frankie looked
around but the voice wasn’t coming from anyone around her—no one
she could see, anyway.

“
Who in the Seven Hells are you?”
the voice demanded again. It was deep and
masculine—a man’s voice.
“And what are you doing here?”

“
I
don’t know,” Frankie said aloud. “I don’t know where I
am.”

Several of the
people behind her were glaring at her now and the black uniformed
guard was beginning to take an interest in her—doubtless for
holding up the line.

“
You’re in the pubtrans station. But more to the point, you’re
in
me,
”
the voice told
her.
“What the
fuck are you doing in my body?”

And then Frankie
realized…the voice was coming from inside her head.

But was it
her
head? Was
she really in someone else’s body? How was that possible, even in a
dream?

“
Is there a problem here?” The guard who had been eyeing her
suspiciously came forward, glaring at her through the metal bars.
He had the same white-blond hair as almost everyone else and narrow
shoulders with a tall, slender build. But skinny or not, the way he
fingered his metal truncheon was distinctly menacing.

Frankie just looked
at him, not knowing what to say.

“
I
said
is there a problem
here,
Kindred?”
the
guard snarled, glaring at her—making the name into a
curse.

“
Tell him no! For fuck’s sake, tell him no and put my hand to
the scanner!”
demanded the voice in her head—if it
was
her head which Frankie was beginning to
doubt.

“
Um…no,” she said and her voice came out sounding deep and
masculine—as deep as the voice in her head. “No…no problem,
officer.”

“
Now raise my hand and put it on the scanner,”
the male voice
instructed.
“I’d
do it myself but you’ve taken over all my functions. All I can do
is watch.”

Hesitantly, Frankie
raised her right hand (the man’s right hand?) and placed it on the
black pad on the side of the turnstile. She half expected to get a
shock but the hand—which definitely wasn’t hers because it was much
too large and masculine looking—was outlined in green light and
then the barred door slid aside, allowing her to pass.

She walked through
in a daze, still examining her hand. It was large—very large—with
long, well-shaped fingers and very clean nails which she liked.
There was nothing worse than a man with dirty fingernails. Carlos
had always had dirt under his nails which disgusted her…

“
Hey—you can’t just stop walking in the middle of a busy
thru-way,”
the
masculine voice barked sharply in her head.
“You’ve got to keep moving or that
Peace Keeper is going to suspect something. He’s still watching us,
you know!”

“
Where am I supposed to go?” Frankie demanded in a low voice.
She supposed she
did
look kind
of crazy, standing still in the middle of a crowded walkway and
studying her hand. But this was so
weird,
damn it—even for a dream!

“
Just keep walking—head down the right hand hallway. The
two-oh-one transport is the one you want.”

Frankie walked as
the voice ordered, keeping quiet though she was burning to ask a
lot more questions. But she didn’t want to look like she was
talking to herself so she kept silent until she found the train the
voice had ordered her to take.

It
was a long, sleek, bullet shaped thing with a shiny black surface
that almost looked like liquid oil. Frankie was sure it was just a
trick of the light but when it whooshed to an almost silent stop in
front of her, the shiny skin shivered and then
melted
open—there was no other word for it—to form an
oval door.

“
Eww!” she exclaimed involuntarily, taking a step back and
causing heads to turn in her direction. “What the
Hell—?”

“
Keep your voice down,”
the voice in her head instructed tersely.
“Talking in public places
isn’t encouraged here. The State prefers all citizens to be silent
in crowded conditions to minimize confusion.”

“
What?” Frankie asked—in a whisper since she was trying to
obey the order. “You’re not allowed to talk in public
here?”

“
Not unless you want a citation,”
the voice informed her.
“Now get on the damned transport so I
can figure out what to do.”

Frankie was
reluctant to go through the melted opening in the shiny black train
but she didn’t see what else she could do. Ducking her head, she
stepped in, being extremely careful not to brush against the edges
of the “door.” This was surprisingly hard to do since her shoulders
were now extremely broad and the opening seemed to be made for
someone with a much narrower frame. Still, she somehow managed and
found herself standing in the middle of a crowded subway car. The
seats on either side were taken, as was much of the standing
room.

“
Walk to the end of the transport,”
the voice in her head commanded.
“It’s usually empty
there. We can talk.”

There certainly
did
seem to
be a lot to talk about. Frankie began making her way to the back of
the long train but it was so crowded she found it impossible to
move without shouldering people aside.

“
Excuse me,” she murmured, as she tried to squeeze past some
men with narrow shoulders who were standing in the center of the
car. “Pardon me—excuse me. Oh—I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed when she
stepped on a woman’s foot.

The woman looked at
her mutely with something like shock on her face. Had she not
understood what Frankie said?

“
I
said, I’m sorry I stepped on your foot,” she said to the woman
again. “I didn’t mean to do that—are you okay?”

“
Shut up!”
roared the voice in her head, so loudly that Frankie winced,
certain that someone else must have heard it.

“
I
was just apologizing,” she muttered under her breath as she
continued her journey to the back of the train. “What’s wrong with
that? Don’t you people have manners here? Wherever
here
is?”

“
Not in a crowded transport,”
the voice retorted.
“Just keep quiet and push to the back. And
I do mean
push
—you have
to if you want to get through this crowd. And
don’t
apologize. You might as well hang a sign around
my neck that says “Switched.”

Frankie wanted to
ask what he meant by “Switched” but she kept her mouth grimly shut
and pushed her way to the back of the train as he had instructed,
even though it went against every bit of good manners her mother
had taught her.

She
did
try to
avoid stepping on any more feet which was hard in the big black
boots she was wearing. She thought longingly of her little pink
flip-flops with the rhinestones on the straps—and of her size five
feet that went in them. The boots—and feet—she was wearing now had
to be a size fourteen at the least and that was a conservative
estimate. How did he—the guy whose body she was somehow currently
inhabiting—stand being so big and tall? Although, it
had
been useful when she was trying to
push her way through the crowd earlier…

“
Here—this will do. Take a seat in the back of the
car.”

Frankie looked up
from her huge boots and realized she had finally reached the back
of the train. There was only one other passenger in this car—a
large, scruffy looking man with a battered and patched gray coat
and a week’s worth of beard stubble on his jaw.

Immediately, she
felt unsafe. No way did she want to share a car with this guy who
was already eyeing her balefully. She started to back out of the
car but the voice in her head barked at her again.

“
Where are you going? The other cars are full—sit!”

“
No,” Frankie muttered under her breath. “You’re crazy! I’m
not sitting alone in a car with that guy!”

He
sighed in her head.
“Fine—I understand if you want privacy. It’s actually a good
idea. Go up to him and tell him he’s in your seat and you want him
gone. Then we can speak without fear of anyone overhearing
you.”

“
What? You want me to
pick a
fight
with
him now?” Frankie couldn’t believe him. “I’m not doing that! I’m
not going anywhere
near
him.
It’s not safe.”

“
What do you mean it’s not safe?
”
The voice sounded increasingly exasperated.
He’s just a common
wanderer. I could oust him from the transport without even drawing
my blaster.”

“
Your blaster? You mean a gun?” Frankie looked down at her
side and saw something she’d missed before—there was a huge weapon
strapped to her hip. It was what Carlos, who was into all those
first person shooter video games, would have called a “hand
cannon.”

“
Madre di Dios,”
she muttered, so upset that she automatically fell back into
Spanish. “You’re wearing a freaking
gun
on a crowded subway train! What kind of a psycho are you
anyway?”

“
I
don’t know what a ‘psycho’ is but if you don’t keep your voice down
we’re going to be discovered! I’m a Battalion Commander so of
course I’m armed,”
he said impatiently.
“Now get rid of the wanderer so we can talk in
private. I have to figure out what to do before I get back to my
quarters and find Xirnah waiting for me.”

“
Xirnah? Who’s Xirnah?” Frankie demanded.