Her Biker From Mars Page 3

  Sy turned and saw she’d silenced herself by putting her hand over her mouth, but she was staring at something in horror. He followed her gaze. The remains of a fire victim lay in one corner of the hallway. Lita was too quiet. When Sy looked at her again, he realized she wasn’t breathing.

  “C’mon,” he growled, grabbing her free hand and leading her to the next flight of stairs. He walked her up them and stopped on the next landing. She still had her hand over her mouth, she hadn’t taken a breath. He shook her by the shoulders and she relaxed her hand, gasping for air like she’d just surfaced in some water.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Sorry, master,” she replied. Her voice was wavering and it was clear she wasn’t okay.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “I’ll be fine, master.”

  Sy suspected that wasn’t a proper answer, either, but he didn’t press the point. If she wanted to cling to whatever was bothering her, it wasn’t his problem. They continued through the building until they reached the roof access, which Sy propped open with a broken mop handle, then they were out in the fresh air again.

  Lita was frowning, like she was trying to concentrate hard on something, and she looked so vulnerable and confused that he wrapped her up in a hug.

  She stiffened and didn’t hug him back. He released her and pulled away, gazing into her good eye.

  “Talk to me, sweet one. What’s the matter?” He spoke gently, hoping to coax her into a calmer state. Whatever was spooking her didn’t want to let go, and he needed her not to do something stupid right now.

  “I think I remembered something from my past, master. Only, I’m not sure. How can you be uncertain about your past like that? How can you see something that makes you feel like someone walked over your grave, but not understand what it is you’re seeing? Why can’t I remember?” When she looked at him, her face was anguished.

  “I suspect someone did a number on your brain. There’s plenty of different mind wipe centers on Mars. Some of them will even dump a new personality on top.” He eyed her thoughtfully. “Father Croxden might have done it. Do you have any strong memories of a gambling debt or a drug addiction?”

  “Father Croxden is a good master and I am pleased to serve him, master,” she said in a dead voice. She sounded like she had practiced this same phrase, over and over, at some point. Sy shrugged. There was no way she’d ever know if she’d had her mind wiped or not.

  “I’ll talk about him however I damn well please. Camera or no camera. Best find yourself a comfy spot, Lita, we’ll be here all night.” He busied himself making a small fire in an empty metal bucket. When he turned around, he found her sitting near him, hugging her knees and resting her face on them. It was the most natural position he’d seen her in since he met her. And it made her look vulnerable. He wanted to wrap her in a blanket and tell her everything would be all right. It was an uncharacteristic mental image for him.

  Nothing about her had given him the impression she was trustworthy, yet, and her master was a very bad man. Sy knew he should keep his distance. Awkwardly, he took half a step toward the other side of the fire, planning to go where he could see her but wasn’t close to her.

  Something stopped him. A twinge in his heart. Instead, he sighed to the universe and sat down beside her, leaning against a piece of wall that had no real purpose. He wrapped one arm around her, drawing her closer, then they fell asleep on the roof while the fire burned and warmed them.

  * * *

  Sy had the president between the crosshairs on his sight. His finger coiled around the trigger. Waiting for a clear shot.

  His face and neck were soaked. Trying not to think about what he was doing, he observed the Earth president shaking hands with someone while photographers swarmed him. He wouldn’t kill any of them. It was bad enough that he had to shoot the president at all.

  Why was he even doing this? First it had been to protect his sister, and to save his own neck from the Mother Theresas. But he might have just gone to Earth in the dead of night and separated his sister from her deadbeat boyfriend, maybe taken her to Saturn for a year or two. She would have fought him, at first, but eventually he would have found a way to make her understand how much danger she was in. They could both have started a new life. But Lita made that impossible.

  Aside from the fact that she was a living videofeed showing Father Croxden what he was doing at all times, she was also at risk. If he abandoned her to save his sister before he killed the Earth president, Croxden would kill Lita somehow. Hell, she was so pliant and scared that she’d probably just stand there and let him do it.

  He was losing his chance. Miraculously, the photographers backed away for a moment. Perhaps they sensed the international tragedy that was about to happen. It was now or never. He began to move his trigger finger to take the shot, then a thud from behind him made him spin around, releasing the gun. Lita had tripped over something and was falling towards the ground. She hit her head on the pink concrete.

  Sy dropped his gun and rushed to her side. The most hardboiled part of his brain was demanding to know what the fuck had happened to his priorities, but the rest of him only wanted to take care of the girl in front of him.

  “I’m blind in my left eye, master! I think the camera got damaged when I hit my head!” she said fearfully.

  “Are you all right other than that?” His eyes took in the damage. There was a cut to the side of her head, but apart from that she seemed fine. Internal injuries, however, might be harder to spot. He hoped her eye implant was just badly designed and prone to falling apart at the slightest impact.

  “I think so. It hurts though, master.” She put her hand to her head. At that moment, a bleeping sound emanated from her neck. Sy saw all the color drain from Lita’s face, her eyes wide, mouth open in horror.

  “What? What is it?” he demanded.

  “Get back! Explosive. Implanted in my neck. It’s just been armed. It will explode thirty seconds after the bleep. Get away, master!” she cried. Sy’s heart contorted again; Lita was imminently going to die, and her only concern was for him.

  “The hell I will.” Sy forced her to the ground. There was no time to be gentle. If there was anything he could do to save her right now, he would do it. He yanked her sheet of red hair back and saw a gray patch beneath her skin that could only be the implant. It was about an inch long and barely two millimeters wide. Snapping his pocket switchblade knife open, he hoped against hope he could do this quick enough to save her. He cut into her flesh, cringing as he did, and tried to get this done as fast as possible.

  * * *

  Lita was no stranger to pain, but the searing agony in her neck was something else entirely. She bit down on her hand and made strangled little whimpers. Screaming involved too much movement, which seemed like it would make the pain worse, so she tried to avoid it. Tears ran down her eyes as she willed Sy to save himself, but the silly man was trying to be a hero. Didn’t he know that people like them never got their happy ending? The thing in her neck bleeped again, to signify that fifteen seconds had passed.

  “Please live,” she implored him tearfully.

  “Shut up and let me save you.” He was growly and stoic as ever.

  There was the feeling like something inside her neck was being ripped apart, and nerves screamed through her entire body.

  “Got it,” he remarked.

  Lita looked up in time to see something small sail over the parapet, then an explosion rocked the building. Down below, people screamed. Lita looked up at Sy with her one working eye.

  “Thank-you, master.” Her last thought was that Father Croxden would punish her very harshly if this was all a test, then darkness engulfed her and she was aware of nothing more.

  * * *

  When Lita awoke, she was in Sy’s bed. The walls were strangely reassuring, like they might be the only thing that could keep Father Croxden away from her. But the reprieve would only be temporary, and she knew it.

>   “Master?” she murmured. Her eye focused on him, perched on the side of the bed, looking concerned. No-one had ever looked at her like that, before, that she could remember. It made her heart feel strange and her throat tighten.

  “You’re gonna live. I stitched you up and you’ve been asleep about ten hours.”

  “Thank-you, master. And for saving me.”

  “Is your silver eye working again yet?” Sy asked. Lita tried to focus her eyes, but everything around her looked flat and it seemed to take longer than usual for her to process the things she saw.

  “No, master. I think it’s completely broken.”

  “Good. Then tell me what the fuck just happened, because you didn’t give me the whole story before,” Sy ordered. His voice was hard. Lita didn’t blame him, but she still wanted him to speak to her softly again. His voice usually reassured her that everything was right with the world.

  “Was this all a test?” she asked. “Are you taking me back to him now?” She had to know before she told him anything at all.

  “A…what?” He stared at her. His utter surprise and confusion proved this hadn’t been a test. She nodded, feeling braver even though the tone of his voice suggested he was displeased with her.

  “All right then. I wasn’t sure if I was being tested by Father Croxden. If not, then he sent me to stay close to you so he could kill you once you’d completed your task. He doesn’t like loose ends. The explosive in my neck was plenty for both of us. If I’d tried to warn you about it, he would have triggered the detonator sooner. When my eye got damaged, he must have suspected some sort of treachery, so he set the implant to explode.”

  Sy just looked at her. Lita wished she could disappear.

  “I’m sorry, master,” she added.

  “I’m not your master.” His reply was the most hurtful thing she’d ever heard in her life. Her stomach clenched up and her cheeks flooded with heat. Of course he didn’t want to be around her. She’d almost blown him up.

  She waited for him to give her some idea of what happened next, but instead he simply went out, slamming the door behind him and leaving her alone in his bed.

  What had she expected? Feeling stupid, she wanted to run away, but she was completely unable to move, whether it was from having her neck cut open or because her heart had been mutilated, she didn’t know. Anyway, it wasn’t like she had anywhere to go. She was free from Father Croxden for now, but he would soon catch up with her if she wandered the streets.

  Never had she been so utterly lost. She stared at the dingy gray ceiling and allowed herself to break down. The tears came readily. The only man she ever cared about had just walked away from her.

  Long minutes passed, or perhaps hours, Lita was unsure. Sy returned and she hastily tried to dry her face. She had been punished enough times for crying in the past, she knew a tear-streaked face wasn’t pleasing to masters unless they’d intentionally hurt her to watch her cry.

  He held something. Two somethings. One in each hand. She didn’t know what they were.

  “Do you like strawberry or blueberry?” he asked her.

  “What?” she stared at him in confusion. Should she still call him master? He had been so adamant before he left. She didn’t want him to leave again.

  “I’ve got two snow cones,” he explained patiently. “One’s strawberry, the other’s blueberry. Which do you want? Or should I pick for you?”

  “I don’t know!” she replied, panic rising. What was a snow cone?

  “Here, have the blueberry.” He passed her the blue thing in his hand. It had a long, pale brown stalk. She took it from him carefully, unsure what to do next. She looked to him for guidance.

  He licked the side of his cone then made the sort of satisfied groaning noise she’d only ever heard men make during sex. Intrigued, Lita copied him, and her tongue was flooded with a slightly tart, mostly sweet fruity taste, with an undertone of cream.

  Sy said nothing as he ate his snow cone with obvious enjoyment. Lita felt like she was imposing on a private ritual. Carefully, she ate her own treat, and it was soon gone.

  “Every damn day I get myself a snow cone. It’s the only thing on this entire planet that makes me feel like I’m not dead yet,” he explained in a gruff voice.

  “Why are you here if you don’t like it? You’re not a slave. You could go anywhere, m—uh…” Lita pointed out, biting back the urge to call him master again.

  “Do you know what a motorcycle gang is?” Sy asked.

  Lita nodded hesitantly. “Father Croxden is always going around them and telling them what to do. In exchange, they pay him a lot of money.” Although the camera and implant couldn’t harm her now, she still worried about sharing this information, but she really wanted to tell Sy about it.

  “Wait, what? What sort of things does he make them do?” Sy asked. Now she’d started, she felt compelled to tell him more.

  “Sometimes he’ll tell one gang something about another gang, then he’ll go to them and tell them something about the first lot. He once told someone that he likes making the gangs fight each other because it stops them teaming up against him.”

  Sy frowned then gave her a brief nod of understanding.

  “Yeah. It figures. I was in a gang called the Mother Theresas. It started out pretty friendly, but as time went on, things changed. A new leader started pulling the strings, and suddenly instead of making money from protecting call girls and selling fake IDs, we were robbing banks and getting rid of bodies. You don’t leave a club, though, unless you’re dead. So when a job went south and a convenience store I was robbing caught fire, I decided to let them think I was inside it at the time. Came here, didn’t look back.” He looked thoughtfully at the ink on the back of his hands.

  “Why did you get involved in the first place?” Lita asked.

  “There’s a lot of lies told about what MCs really do, because they keep to themselves and they’re a mystery to people. What unites every motorcycle club, beneath their turf wars and different patches, is that they all love bikes, and they all stand for freedom and chaos. The clubs all live those values differently. Some think freedom extends to killing people. Others just resent having to play in the rat race. Living your whole life to line someone else’s pocket, towing the party line, following orders… it gets old.”

  “But don’t they have to do that in an MC anyway? Their leaders take a cut of their money and boss them around just the same.” From her own position, Lita easily saw the imbalance of power in this so-called freedom.

  “Clever girl. But it’s usually got better hours and more varied tasks. And the money’s worth it. I got in because I was restless at eighteen. I’d been to school, I saw the sort of jobs on offer. College was just false promises for people like me. I didn’t have rich parents and connections to set me up in a job afterwards. I wanted freedom. And I wanted out of Mars. Grew up here. Hated it. My family had nothing.”

  “Why did you come back?” No wonder he was always so edgy, if he hated Mars so much.

  “To lay low from the Theresas until they forgot my face. Then the stupid priest found me.”

  Geez. Croxden was like a professional spanner gumming up everything he ever came across and turning it to his own advantage.

  “You know he’s not a real priest, right? He just pretends he’s religious so he doesn’t get searched at the spaceport.”

  “Is that so?” Sy looked amused. Lita’s heart picked up at the thought that she’d told him something useful.

  “He isn’t even ordained. I heard him tell someone once.” She giggled irreverently at sharing this with Sy.

  “Then I feel less bad about what I want to do to him.” His voice was dark.

  “Which is?”

  Sy fixed her with a hard glare. “Mind your own business.” He paused for a moment, then added, “I don’t trust you, yet.” If his intention was to soften the rebuke, it failed miserably, and Lita closed her mouth.

  Sy shook his head. “Look, I’m
sorry, okay? But I’m not going to magically let you into my world just because you told me something about your boss.”

  Lita got riled up at the idea she worked for Father Croxden. The idea was infuriating, especially after everything she’d been through. “He’s not my boss. People choose to work for a boss. He was my master. And I never chose him. I never chose this. Being a slave. It’s something that just happened to me. I couldn’t tell you before, when the eye-cam was working, but do you know what my earliest memory was?”

  “Go on,” Sy growled. Lita thought he was only humoring her but she decided to tell him anyway.

  “Waking up on an operating table, and the doctor was talking to Father Croxden about me, like I wasn’t even alive. I felt so aroused, like I might just disintegrate right there. It overtook everything. I didn’t remember who I was, and I don’t know how I got there, but I’m certain that if I’d chosen it, they wouldn’t have made me forget. Then the priest took me underground to train me. The doctor checked on me sporadically, to ensure I would survive whatever punishments I’d been given. Sometimes, the doctor punished me himself. His methods were more precise, more painful, and rarely left any marks on my body. My choices were to obey or to be taken apart, over the space of years. Do you know what they do with the failed slaves?”

  “Kill them?” Sy hazarded.

  “They’re the lucky ones,” Lita said darkly. She stared into the distance as she remembered the terrifying sounds that filled the cages at night, of agonized suffering that she still dreamed about sometimes. She roused herself with a shudder. “These are people who removed my eye so they could put a metal camera in my face. It really hurt. And now I’m half-blind. So if you’re planning to take me back there, I’d rather have a new exploding implant.” She hadn’t been allowed the luxury of dignity or privacy for so long that, now she had a voice again, she had no hesitation in telling him about her past, even though she knew he wouldn’t reciprocate. He probably didn’t even care. She wondered if he would ever understand her—if he even wanted to.