Chapter 29 #3
“Improving,” Haseem said. “She’ll need some reconstruction and rehab after the nanos do their job.
She should be awake in a few hours. I’ll tell her you stopped by.
” He waved a hand to indicate the pristine room.
“This is like having my own tiny medic center. I don’t know how they came by a Jumper-rated medic bay that’s only supposed to be in CPS facilities, much less got it installed in an old freighter. ”
Arco nodded in amused agreement. “Some questions are better left unasked. By the way, if you didn’t already know, Nilsson is a healer. I know that minder talents can sometimes burn through standard painkiller meds.”
“Yes, N’Dwama already told me about Nilsson and herself,” Haseem said. “It’s nice that you look out for each other.”
Renner cleared his throat. “I’m glad to see you here. You look well.” The words felt stiff and clumsy, but he’d made a private promise to connect with people. Since he had somehow worked up the courage to tell Arco he loved her, he could damn well tell his friend he was happy to see him.
Haseem’s smile softened. “Thank you.” He darted a quick, perceptive glance at Arco, then let his void-black eyes settle warmly on Renner. “You look happy.”
“I am.” Old Renner would have died rather than admitting it. Actually, old Renner had died. New Renner wanted love in his life, even if it made him vulnerable.
Arco held out her hand to him. “Let’s go use the freshers before the ship goes transit. I do not want to be stuck in a jump seat with a full bladder.”
While they had been gone, someone had taken a marker to the corridor walls.
Cabin numbers and last names were now written beside each door.
Renner paused outside theirs. Charrascos.
Brenner. Seeing the names linked together gave him unexpected satisfaction.
He palmed the door open and followed Arco inside.
Arco dropped onto the edge of the left bunk with a heavy sigh. “I am just about flatlined. I need sleep, but I want to stay awake until we go transit.” She patted the narrow mattress beside her. “Come sit with me? We need to talk.”
Renner toed off his boots and climbed onto the bed.
He settled with his back against the discolored metal wall.
Arco shifted immediately, tucking herself between his legs and leaning back against his chest. He wrapped his arms loosely around her waist and rested his chin near her temple.
The soft heat of her skin against his arms anchored him like nothing else could.
Arco covered his hands with hers. “You flux my jets every time I look at you. I want to have sex with you. Pleasure you.” She took a shallow breath. “But to be honest, I haven’t been with anyone in over a decade. I am probably terrible at it.”
Renner tightened his embrace. The subject felt like navigating a minefield blindfolded, but he owed her his absolute truth.
“When I wore Davidro’s collar, I trained my body to ignore desire.
He used everything against me. I made myself dead to it.
” Swallowing hard, he forced the words past the lingering phantom pressure on his throat.
“My new body does what it wants. Visions of sex with you have fluxed my dreams since I woke up in the rehab center. I just have no idea how to make that a reality.”
Arco turned her head, craning her neck to press a lingering kiss to his jaw. “Let’s learn together. We can go as slow as we need to.” She stroked his knuckles. “Our relationship means more to me than just sex. You are the bravest man I have ever met.”
A massive wave of emotion crashed over him. He opened his mouth, searching for words to describe the profound reverence swelling in his chest. Finding none, he buried his face in her hair and held her closer.
Arco took a deep breath and let out. “I know far too much about you from asshole Davidro’s journals. It is only fair you know something about me.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do,” Arco insisted. “I grew up in a progressive Naturalist enclave.”
Renner frowned. He found the Naturalists utterly incomprehensible, grouping them with the rest of the galaxy’s baffling religionists. He kept his opinion to himself.
“They believed minder talents were part of Gaia’s blessing,” Arco continued, “rather than the result of genetic meddling by rogue First Wave researchers. No one cared that I developed a filer talent by the time I was ten. And maybe it’s an uncatalogued talent, or maybe I was just lonely, but people liked talking to me.
They had interesting stories. I wanted to hear them. ”
She shifted slightly, her shoulders hunching.
“Then I got sick. Failure-to-thrive sick. In a conservative group, they would have held a solemn reintegration-with-the-universe ceremony to mark my passing. In our progressive enclave, the leaders allowed my parents to take me to a city medical center.”
Renner felt the tension radiating into her arms. He smoothed his thumbs across her trapezius muscles until they relaxed a little.
“The medics said my immune system was attacking itself. They gave me a year or two to live. The standard treatment required an implanted immune system. The root cause was a genetic defect that would have been caught and fixed at birth if I’d been born in a medic center.
The genetic defect part made Gaia’s select circle reject my parents’ plea to save their only child.
When Gaia makes mistakes, Gaia corrects them. It’s not humans’ place to intervene.”
Renner felt a stirring of anger. The universe overflowed with cruel shit-buckets hiding behind pious rules.