Under Dark Sky Law (13 page)

He nodded. “I see. You like it when you’re
able to get someone to break their own rules,” he said.

“Rules were meant to be broken. It’s funny
when someone that thinks their rules are so sacred, but then breaks
them so easily. I’m sure you know a little something about that,”
she said.

The fingers of his left hand tapped lightly
on the desk. “I just might,” he said simply.

“What did you say your name was again?” she
asked.

“I didn’t actually—you interrupted me when I
tried to introduce myself,” he said.

She was having a little bit of trouble
letting go of the “Xero” attitude. There was just a different way
of getting things done in the pit, and it didn’t exactly work the
same way in the domes. Of course, doing things that way was more
fun, but it also had more than it’s fair share of repercussions.
Part of it was frustration, part of it was just not giving a fuck,
and part of it was just survival instinct. Xero could survive in
places that Anastasia just couldn’t. She’d collected enough bruises
and stab wounds for one week though, and she had people on the
line. Trina was slowly dying and Argon was missing in action.
There’d been enough dicking around. Time to take shit seriously,
swallow some hard pills, stop fucking up, and get back on the
road.

“Well, I’m sorry about that. I’ve had a bit
of a rough week,” she said.

He licked his lips, and for a brief moment a
look crossed his face. It was gone as quickly as it came, but it
was enough to make Xero lean forward. Then she knew what it was
that was bothering her. It was a dance. It was like they were two
experienced hunters stalking each other, two lions tracking each
other through the bush.

“I think that you will be most interesting to
work with,” he said with just a hint of that edge she’d seen a
glimpse of, but then he sat straight up again and it was gone, back
to his soft and caring psychiatrist routine. “My name is Dr.
Shepherd. Ezekiel Shepherd,” he said, pushing a name placard that
had been moved sideways on his desk so that it was facing her
again.

“Zeke, eh? That must have been a tough name
to grow up with,” she said.

“You have no idea,” he said softly. “I
usually just stick with Dr. Shepherd. However, you can call me
something else though, if you’d like, Dr. Pietrovich.”

It was weird hearing someone call her that.
She was old enough that she hadn’t been able to erase her real name
from the hard copy records at the base of the dome census data.
That meant it was also hard to truly hide her past life from anyone
that really wanted to find it, but she’d at least covered her
tracks enough that the typical government agent wouldn’t come
across it in any databases. You’d have to really want to get some
hardcore dirt to dig up the real information about her life in the
domes. This guy had done some serious homework, and she doubted
that it was something that had happened overnight. He’d been
waiting for her.

“And what would that be?” she said.

“You can call me Xed. With an X,” he said and
she failed to stifle a laugh.

She looked around, thinking back to the
layout of the office, wondering how easy someone could hear inside.
“You’ve got to be joking me,” she said, still leaking giggles
despite her attempt to keep things serious.

“Don’t worry. This place is sound proof, and
there are no bugs in here. I don’t expect you to accept that, but
once we clean you up a bit, you can check yourself if you like,” he
said.

“I may very well take you up on that. And you
may as well just call me Xero if you want me to call you Xed,” she
said. She couldn’t believe the ludicrousness of the situation. The
guy sitting in front of her with neat rimless spectacles and a
pressed blue checked dress shirt was claiming to be Xed. The
Xed.

“Very well. I can tell you doubt me, but I
assure you, if nothing else I have basic medical training, and I’m
not going to do anything to you in the middle of a government
office building. I really just want to have a nice chat with you,”
he said, flashing her a politician’s smile that she knew was meant
to be ironic.

If he had wanted to kill her, he wouldn’t
have gone through all the trouble to bring her to his office
either. There had a been a hundred other times he could have tried
to get a hit in on her if that’s what he’d wanted. Besides, her ego
said that despite his reputation, she was definitely faster and
more of a seasoned combat veteran than him—if he tried anything,
he’d be the one who’d end up laid out on the cheap industrial
carpet. She looked in his eyes, showing him that hard edge in her
own that said she wouldn’t think twice about slitting his throat if
she had to. The look he returned said that he understood that fact,
and they had a moment of unstated agreement.

“Sure,” she said. “I’d hate to ruin anymore
expensive furniture items.”

She approached the desk and he pulled up a
chair. They spent the next half hour collaboratively cleaning and
stitching up her wounds. His medical kit had some of the
long-lasting waterproof bandages that were hard to get ahold of in
the pits, which was great because you could shower with them and
not ruin fresh stitches. She didn’t know what the hell he wanted
from her, but she’d have basically sold her soul for a fucking hot
shower at that point. In her mind, the greatest tragedy of the last
two days was not getting to use that whirlpool hot tub at The
Niagara.

He grabbed her right arm and inspected the
row of meticulous sutures that he’d sewn along the jagged slice
from the skeleton stabbing. The strength in his grip was
surprising, and she noticed that he was more muscular underneath
his crisp but oversized dress shirt than she’d originally
thought.

“Well that’s much better, isn’t it?” he said
when they were finished. He started cleaning up medical supplies
and the mess they’d made on the desk. They’d both been fairly
meticulous, but some blood had still splattered on the dark
wood.

“Sorry about the mess,” she said. “You got a
rag or something?”

“I got it,” he said and extracted some
sterile wipes, dragging one across the desk and leaving it
sparkling with a sheen of disinfectant. “Good as new.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have any antibiotics,
would you?” she asked.

He leaned back in his grey suede office
chair. “What kind?” he said.

“Anything really. These wounds were open in a
cesspool all night and I don’t really have time to deal with flesh
rot. Old school penicillin would even do,” she said.

He leaned under his desk and came up with a
vial and a large syringe with a large-bore needle. “I think we can
arrange that,” he said. He started shaking the vial and partially
removed the syringe from its packaging, but she stopped him.

“Let me do that,” she said. He handed over
the vial and the partly unwrapped syringe. The vial was cold,
labeled with the appropriate title, and factory sealed. If it
wasn’t actually an antibiotic, he’d done a good job of hiding
it.

“You’ve got a fridge down there? Didn’t you
just move to this office?” she said.

“It never hurts to be prepared. These are
strange times,” he said.

Xero snickered. “They are indeed,” she said.
She was starting to like this guy.

She drew up a syringe full of the thick white
liquid. “This isn’t going to be pleasant. I need a big muscle to
shoot this into. Hope you don’t mind me getting naked in your
office. Wouldn’t want anyone thinking you were being inappropriate
on the job,” she said.

He stood up and came around to her side of
the desk. “It should really go in the gluteus. Let me help,” he
said.

Sure? Why not? She’d already established that
if he was going to attack her, it wasn’t going to be here, or any
time in the immediate future. There was something he wanted from
her, and he seemed like the type that would be patient enough to
wait for it.

She nodded and peeled down the right side of
her jeans, exposing the upper side of her ass. He sterilized a
patch of skin and gave her the injection with practiced confidence.
She winced with one eye, but it really hadn’t been that
uncomfortable given the size of the injection.

“You have a gentle touch,” she said, rubbing
the injection site for a moment before pulling up her pants. It
wasn’t the most intimate connection she’d ever had with a complete
stranger, but it had certainly been a moment of unexpected
intimacy.

“Thanks, I pride myself on having a certain
finesse in my job. Can I interest you in any pain medication
injections while I’m at it?” he said.

She shook her head. “No, I stay away from
anything like that unless I absolutely have to,” she said.

“Interesting,” he said slowly and disposed of
the medical waste.

She sat back down in the chair and he resumed
his position behind the desk. “So. I have a few questions to ask
you,” he said. “Would that be alright?”

“Well you just fondled my ass, so you may as
well get to know me a little better,” she said and winked. The both
laughed at her absurdity, and she felt herself getting comfortable
around him.

“You have a point. I’m not usually so forward
with people I don’t know, but then again I don’t usually provide
emergency medical care in my office either,” he said.

“Right, because most psychiatrists keep
refrigerated antibiotics in a secret cubby of their desk,” she
said.

He bit the corner of his lip. “Like I said.
You never know when you disaster might strike,” he said.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?”
she said.

“Don’t you want to check this place for bugs
first?” he said.

“I’ve got a scrambler in my pocket, and it
would have picked up any obvious equipment. Plus, if you’re airing
your dirty laundry on tape, we’d want that info to stay out of the
same people’s hands. If we’re really running in the same circles,
there’s not a lot of my information that would be useful to anyone.
They already know,” she said.

He flexed his knuckles, clearly satisfied
with her response. “I can see that you’re no fool. You’ve been
around the block a few times,” he said.
“But you already knew that,” she said. “You clearly did your
homework. So, the question is—what do you want from me?”

“So, I’m assuming you know who I am?” he
said.

“I know who you say you are,” she said, but
just from the short time she’d interacted with him, she knew he was
telling the truth. She felt a kind of kinship with him, like they
were operating on the same plane. It didn’t exactly make her trust
him more, but it made her understand him on an intuitive level.

“I’m pretty sure we’re clear about each
other’s identities, wouldn’t you say?” he said and she nodded
begrudgingly.

“Yeah, I’m willing to go with that hypothesis
for the time being,” she said.

“For the moment, I just want to offer you
something—information, and maybe some help. If you like what I have
to offer, perhaps we can talk a little bit more about a few
business ideas that I have,” he said.

From the way he was looking at her, he was
interested in business and pleasure, and that was just fine with
Xero. She never had a problem with mashing together two good
things. “Business ideas, eh? Have you ever even been out to the
pits?” she said. He looked like a genuine lifelong dome dweller,
but you never could be totally certain.

“I’m actually from the flats, but I have a
limited resistance to the outside. Not enough to live in the pits,
no, but I can travel there for short periods of time,” he said, and
Xero was convinced that there was in fact no surveillance going on.
That wasn’t something anyone would want to reveal, even jokingly.
In these days, if anyone figured out that you’d developed
atmospheric resistance potential, your days in the dome were
numbered, you may as well toss your Zone Pass in the fire.

“How were you able to get away with working
inside the domes if you’re from the flats?” she asked with genuine
surprise.

“I am very, very good with computers. I can
pretty much do anything I need to with the government systems,
including obscuring my own birth status,” he said. “Unfortunately,
there’s not much I can do for you on that front, without giving you
a totally new identity. I’m just a few years younger than you,
which let me escape the paper trail that’s still very difficult to
erase, and you’re too well known of a government contractor for me
to just make all of that disappear without extreme suspicion.”

“Yes, I know, I don’t really need anything
like that anyway. But still, I’m impressed. Erasing your birth
status is no easy feat,” she said. In fact, there was only one
other person that she’d ever known who had been successful in
pulling something like that off.

“I think you’ll find that I’m very capable in
a variety of areas if you decide to accept my business proposition.
However, as I said, I would like to focus on your needs first,” he
said, leaning further over the desk again. “So, my question to you
is, what can I do for you?”

“Well, for starters I could use a fucking hot
shower. I don’t mind tangling with riffraff, but I’ll be damned if
I like smelling like one,” she said.

“That should be easy enough to arrange.
Beyond that, what else can I help you with,” he said.

“Since you asked, there’s a couple things I
need. One, I need information, if you have any,” she said.

“About the ongoing attacks,” he said as a
statement. “That is actually part of what I want to discuss with
you. I don’t know a lot, but I have been able to gather some
information. My weakness is that my reach doesn’t extend very far
into the pits, so I’m limited to what I can see in the domes and
the flats. Turns out pit dwellers don’t really like working with
people outside their own persuasion.”