The Seek (8 page)

What was it she had seen?

Kyn focused hard on the dance floor as the Connect and the whiskey and the music tried to lull her into letting it go. The beast was beautiful; made of so many bodies. There were men and women in various states of dress and undress, touching, moving, spreading love and connection with their fingertips. And in the centre of it all, the thing that had caught Kyn’s eye: a girl. A girl like all the others, in a mask and wearing a vibro. Hard-bodied and perfect, moving to the music under the strobes. She could have been just like any of the others, out to snag an Avenger, except for two things.

Firstly, she was moving like no-one Kyn had ever seen move before, or at least not for a very long time. Fluid and graceful. And…Kyn looked for what it was that she had noticed. Expert. That was it. Although she was adapting and playing with them, her moves were the result of training. And they were technically perfect. Someone had taught this girl ballet, against all the rules. And she was damned good at it.

Kyn was almost certain no-one else in the club would notice. The girl wasn’t out there doing ballet. But if you knew the art, you knew that she did too.

That alone was enough to make Kyn stop and take notice.

But then there was the second thing.

Kyn knew her. She recognised the lines of her body, the shape of her breasts. The way she held herself. Kyn was an avid student of the human body. It was how she had stayed alive in so many situations when so many others hadn’t. She studied the intricate physical nuances of the people and creatures she met. And she had stood in front of this girl and imprinted on her mind; the better to work with her and perfect her.

It was Mirren. A long purple bruise stood out in sharp relief on one long leg — the result of their training session earlier in the day. Kyn was surprised the girl could walk, let alone dance.

Kyn sighed. What the hell was Mirren doing here?

And what the hell should Kyn do about it? What could she do about it?

It was illegal, but that wasn’t so much the problem. All the Avengers here were doing something forbidden. But no-one would care. They were boys, about to go off and fight, probably die. They were permitted a little look-the-other-way indulgence. And there was anonymity in their unity.

Mirren was different. She had no tattoo yet to advertise her status as an Avenger, if indeed she made it through training at all. But if one of them later recognised her — one of her trainers, or one of her classmates, or one of her crew…Kyn shuddered. It could go very badly for her. She was already different. She needed to be careful.

And she was young. Seventeen. And she was, Kyn had to admit it to herself, kind of different.

But what to do? Kyn could hardly front her without outing herself.

So she watched. And as she did, she realised she wasn’t the only one.

In that same way that her sixth sense for the many moods of the human body had alerted her to Mirren’s presence at the club, Kyn became aware that the ex-Avenger who stood at the door was watching Mirren too. It was the same guy from the last time Kyn had been here, wearing the black stump of his ruined arm like a badge of honour. He sported facial tattoos like those favoured by Posteri warriors; a great, drooling creature snarled out from one half of his face. And it was clear to Kyn that he liked what he saw as he ogled Mirren. She watched him watching Mirren charge — saw his tongue dart out quickly to lick his lips as he followed her perfect moves.

She tried to assess the man while not eyeballing him straight on. He was jumpy and taut, ready for action. His hand bunched and unclenched in turn, and he stretched his neck to the side repeatedly, like a boxer preparing for the fight. He was on something, but it sure as hell wasn’t Connect. Connect made you loose and happy, a danger to no-one. This guy looked like he had a chip on his shoulder the size of a Termeritian boulder, and he was cruising for some action.

Fuck.

As Kyn watched, he moved towards Mirren on the dance floor, angling towards her, determination announcing itself from every cell. He stopped only to whisper in the ear of another, younger guy, who smiled broadly, nodded abruptly, and stepped over to the doorway post the guard had deserted.

The big amputee pushed into the dancing beast, and the crowd seemed to part before him; something about his size, perhaps, or the dangerous edge to his body that the dancers were probably registering on some level but not even aware that they were responding to. The beast parted before him and he was at Mirren’s side in moments.

She was dancing slower now than she had been when Kyn had first spotted her. Kyn could see the leaden effect of the Connect on her movements. Her arms were extended to the roofline, her hips swayed in time with the crooning electronic notes, and her feet kept seductive time. The guard from the door slid in behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and swaying against her, leaning down to nuzzle her neck as she danced. Kyn watched Mirren lean back in to him, imagining how good his height and bulk would feel to neurones that were firing off on Connect and keen to French kiss the world. He was an impressive physical specimen, even with his injury. Shirtless and clad only in the black pants and boots of the Avenger station uniform, his white chest rippled muscle and old injury.

Kyn did not know him, so he must have been retired over ten years ago. She placed him around forty. Too old for Mirren. As a general rule, the only Avengers over thirty who were still alive were injured ex-Avengers. She thought about Jedro. Or management. Or Magisters. She watched the man grind into Mirren’s back and buttocks, and she noticed again the staccato edge to his movement that made her sure he was not on Connect. He was on something, but not Connect. Too old, and too experienced, and too hardened. And tonight, too jumpy. The last thing anyone needed was a man like that, full of whatever he’d taken, taking a shine to you. Let alone a seventeen-year-old girl who’d just lost her family and then taken a beating on her first day of training.

Kyn sighed and settled back in a nook in the wall, drawing herself behind a coolie to watch. The ex-Avenger’s hands were running over Mirren’s buttocks as if he was checking the firmness of a Tyverian Moonfruit. They started to knead and squeeze, then his hands slipped around to the front of Mirren again, working their way up the inside of her short dress. Mirren leaned back into him as he did it, savouring the feeling of those big hands on her. Kyn could only imagine how sore the girl’s gluts would be tonight, after the number of times she had fallen on the ice-mat today. Were those hands offering some comfort to the parts of her that were sore and sad?

As the music changed pace, the man picked her up and held her above the crowd, looking up at her with blazing eyes. He was one of the only people in the place not wearing a mask, and it was easy to see the intent written all over his face. Mirren arched her back in the lift, seeming to enjoy the elevation and the feeling of flying. She held out her arms and circled the room with them. When the ex-Avenger brought her down, he didn’t let her feet touch the floor, but wrapped her legs around his hips and strode off the dance floor with her. Again, the writhing beast parted for him, and Kyn was reminded of some god striding off the floor with his prize.

Except Mirren was more than that, and Kyn didn’t know quite what to do about it.

She watched the two disappear to the corridor where the playrooms lay, and it was clear that Mirren wasn’t objecting to the guard’s plan. Her arms were wrapped around his shoulders, her face buried in his neck. Her legs were still locked around his waist.

Kyn tried to sort through what she was feeling and thinking. Mirren was a young woman who was perfectly old enough to make decisions about what she wanted to do with her body. She’d just volunteered to join the Avengers — the only volunteer other than herself that Kyn had even known. She’d lost her parents, and she was only seventeen, but on the other hand she could fight better than almost any raw recruit Kyn had encountered, and there was a self-possession and calm to this young girl that told Kyn she knew what she wanted and was not at all interested in anyone telling her that she couldn’t have it.

It was not Kyn’s place to blast into the middle of whatever these two had going on, and she couldn’t even work out why she wanted to. She started trying to unpick it all. He was old, and damaged, sure, but it wasn’t that. They were all damaged, inside or out. It was the danger of this for Mirren — the danger of her being discovered here, given who and what she was. There was no way she could understand how badly that would play out in the messed-up boys’ club that was Avenger HQ, when they discovered she was the new recruit, and a girl, and a volunteer.

Avengers kill, and protect, and fuck.

Avengers don’t get fucked.

And even with all of that, it might not have mattered, except that it was this guy. This guy who was old and mean and charged on something that wasn’t as safe and lovely as Connect.

What did he want from Mirren?

Kyn pushed herself forward off her place at the wall and decided she had to find out.

She padded down the corridor, scenes flicking before her eyes that were like a do-over of the last time she had been here. Bodies in all their shapes and permutations, coupled together in every conceivable way. Writhing, pleasuring, licking, moaning.

Kyn conducted a full reconnaissance of the playrooms, but didn’t see Mirren. Her heart rate started to pick up, as she decided she must have missed something, and skipped as quickly and unobtrusively as she could back down the corridor. Again, no Mirren. Where the hell had they gone? Kyn’s eyes scanned the space — up and down the corridor, all the way to the bathrooms.

Nothing.

And then. Just behind the bathrooms, the slightest shadow of an entry hatch. Some kind of storeroom, perhaps. Not open, like the others. Impossible to see if they were there, and what was going on. But Kyn’s body was telling she had to go and see. And Kyn’s body was just about the only thing Kyn trusted in the universe. Especially now that Pietr was gone.

Kyn sidled down to the door. Nothing for it. She lifted her fist and knocked. After a few seconds, a face appeared, and Kyn slid the hutanium toe of her boot into the crack he opened up. Not the ex-Avenger who’d carried Mirren away; another man. Smaller and darker, but with the same meanness wired into his circuitry. And no mask, which Kyn assumed meant he worked here at the club also.

‘What do you want?’ The little rat’s voice was flat and nasal.

Kyn forced a smile onto her face, below her mask. ‘Just looking for a friend,’ she said carefully. ‘We seem to have become separated.’

‘Fuck off,’ the rat grunted, making to close the hatch.

But Kyn’s toe was there. ‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘I just want to check if my friend’s in here.’

The rat’s features darkened into a snarl, then just as quickly something sly and ugly slid across them. ‘Sure,’ he said, stepping back to let her in. ‘This the little bitch?’

As Kyn stepped into the darkened room, all her senses alert for an ambush from the rat behind her, she saw Mirren. She was strapped to a black frame, her hands above her head, her dress hanging in two jagged rents on either side of her exposed breasts. Her mask had been removed and lay on the floor. A long red gash ran down one side of her face, and one eye was closed, a bruise forming around its perimeter. She had obviously put up a neat fight. The huge ex-Avenger who had carried her from the dance floor was fastening the buckles on the straps and he turned to greet Kyn like an old friend, a greedy smile splitting his tattooed face. ‘You want some of this action too, darlin’?’

A third man leaned against the right hand wall, watching the action unfold, and he turned insolent eyes on Kyn too. He was tall, almost as tall as the ex-Avenger guard, but lean and bald. His skin was very dark. ‘She looks like she likes to play,’ he said, stepping towards her.

And of it all, the very worst was watching Mirren’s face. It was closed and sad, like she was waiting for the axe to fall. Her head was turned slightly to the side, as if she had no intention of meeting the eyes of whoever this newcomer was, and was resigned that she had, somehow, ended up in a bad place after an evening that had started so beautifully. Kyn thought back to her clever, graceful moves on the dance floor when she had first seen her, like a butterfly finally permitted flight. Fury surged through Kyn’s blood at the sight of her bound and cheated. Hurt.

‘Let her go,’ she said quietly, turning slightly to kick the hatch shut behind her. Kyn knew the vibro would mask the lethal intent she laced the words with, but she couldn’t risk removing it. Voice was an identifier, that’s why they masked it as well as faces in this place.

All three men laughed as one. But the rat was closest to her, and his laugh was the creakiest and dirtiest of all, as if the interruption was just adding to his enjoyment of the moment. The dark man finished laughing first and spoke. ‘She does wanna play!’ He clapped his hands.

The rat, still standing slightly behind Kyn, made to grab her arms, but she stepped neatly away from him. ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ she said. Actually, it wasn’t true. She wanted to tear them apart. She wanted to hurt them, and break them, and then truss them up on the bloody frame that Kyn was hanging from.

But she knew that to do so would be to reveal herself. Her fight was her signature, and these three men would definitely know that no other woman on this station could give them the fight that she would if they crossed her.

She went on. ‘But I will. Your only choice right now is to untie her, move to the wall’ — She gestured to the left hand side of the room — ‘and get the fuck out of my way while I take her out of here.’

The big one, the ex-Avenger, smiled as he flicked open a prod and unleashed its blue flame, holding it up like a prize. ‘Come on then, darlin’,’ he said, licking his lips like he had as he’d watched Mirren dancing, back at the club.

Fuck. Kyn was out of options.

Before the big man registered her movement, she streaked forward, kicked the prod out of his grasp and drove the flat of her hand against the bridge of his nose, hard. He stumbled backwards and Kyn felt the other two bodies coming for her. She spun into a high kick that took the rat down and destabilised the dark one. The big one lunged towards her and she picked up the prod from where it had clattered beside her feet and charged him, driving it into his right eye and enjoying the frisson she felt as she smelled burning hair and tissue. He screamed and fell back behind the frame. As Kyn clocked that he was down and staying down, she caught Mirren’s eye. The girl’s face had lightened, and her eyes were actively following the action. She looked younger, suddenly — scared but hopeful at the same time. And, Kyn was sure, excited by the fight. Kyn noticed her fingers twitching in their binds.