Serpent Heart Hid with Flowering Face
Explain.” Lusa didn’t wait for an answer. She left in the wrong direction.
Kerr dusted herself off and raced to catch up. Damn her short legs. Lusa walked like she was trying to show off her arse, long slow strides that covered far more ground than Kerr’s knobbly legs. “Explain what?”
“Why am I doing this?” Lusa didn’t turn around.
“Does it matter? We have your sister.” Twilight had collapsed into night, but even in the dark, Kerr could see that Lusa hadn’t corrected course. “Where are you going?”
“I need to know how much guilt I’m going to carry running your errands. And I’m going to that old fuel station over there.” Lusa continued walking. Strands of black hair had worked themselves loose and were now whipping about her face in time with her long jacket kissing her ankles.
An odious display of wealth. Who wore a jacket when Thermabulles existed?
Though, she had to admit, it looked nice.
Kerr followed the lines it made from her broad shoulders to her waist, tapering out and accentuating her hips with each step, wondering whether a jacket would make her look taller.
She doubted anything could, aside from a full body transformation, and the Styx controlled the only DocPods that could do that.
Maybe the Adlets did too. No-one knew what they had.
“And you need that for what now?”
Lusa didn’t answer. She entered the doorless kiosk and rummaged around the bottom shelves.
Standing awkwardly, Kerr waited while Lusa threw old tools and expired snacks around the shop.
More hair fell from her bun, tracing her neck seductively, like a lover might with the backs of their fingers as she bent over.
Standing, Lusa held a small eth canister aloft.
Kerr averted her eyes, only to have them fall to her…
“What are you staring at? Let’s get this over with.”
Kerr grit her teeth, willing the embarrassment to dissipate. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Lusa scoffed. “Model 2 is over there.” She pointed off toward a tower gone dark years ago, the blocked starlight being the only indication that it existed. “You want to walk across the city?”
“You have a car?” Given her jacket, Kerr shouldn’t be surprised at that level of wealth.
“No.” Lusa stopped at a wreck covered by rubble that had been there so long, scrub brush had started growing through the windscreen.
Kerr scrambled to catch up. “I don’t think an eth canister that small is going to make it go.”
Lusa made a sort of strangled noise in her throat. Kerr thought it might have been a laugh. “At least you have a sense of humour.” She ripped a canister from a motorcycle hidden behind the wreck and replaced it with the new one.
How depressing was it that she tried to stop herself from glowing at the barest hint of praise?
Kerr focused on the bike instead. It didn’t look like a factory job.
Someone had clearly chopped it to pieces and reassembled it with several mods for rough terrain – unsurprising, given the state of the roads around here.
“Have you ever ridden one before?” Lusa threw the empty canister in the boot of the wreck.
Kerr shook her head. “I’ve never seen one that works. Where did you get that?”
Lusa pulled the remainder of her hair free from the bun and shook it loose. The countless times Kerr had rewatched the footage of those raven strands flowing as she severed Cinder’s fingers. Fear? Admiration? Kerr couldn’t name the emotion, but it wasn’t hatred. She pulled at her own hair absently.
Lusa took the elastic from her mouth and pulled her hair into a tight ponytail. “Your hair’s black now.”
“What?” Kerr realised her fingers were tangled. She righted herself after a brief panic.
“You were a reddish blonde when we first met. When you shot Pinga,” Lusa said.
Kerr flexed the fingers on her artificial hand. She suddenly worried Lusa would think she’d dyed it to match hers. “I’ve got a baby face, yeah? It makes me look a bit older.”
“It doesn’t,” Lusa said matter-of-factly. “It makes your skin look even paler.”
Kerr held out the back of her hand, staring. “What’s wrong with my skin?”
Lusa ignored that question too and tossed her a helmet. Kerr surprised herself by catching it.
“I wasn’t expecting passengers, so I only brought one.”
“How do I…”
Lusa rolled her eyes and helped her fasten it. Those same fingers that had murdered Piston, warm and soft against her neck, offensively intimate. Kerr tried to summon back the anger she felt when she’d first learned of what happened, but failed.
“Are you okay?” Lusa cocked an eyebrow.
“What?” Kerr had trouble getting the word out.
“You’re breathing heavy. Are you okay? We can walk if you’re really that afraid of motorcycles. I was hoping we could get this over with quickly.”
“No, I…” Kerr couldn’t come up with a rational explanation. Being treated with basic human kindness by the woman who took her forearm was short-circuiting her brain. There weren’t words for what she was feeling and it annoyed her.
“It’s alright, I’ll walk you through it.” Lusa flipped down the passenger pegs and straddled the bike. “Step on those and throw your leg over.”
“Behind you?” Kerr’s voice cracked.
“Unless you want to drive.” Lusa steadied the bike while Kerr clambered onto the back with all the grace of an inebriated panda. Of course, Lusa was acting nice. Kerr couldn’t look less threatening if she tried.
“Now what?” Her voice sounded funny in the helmet, each breath rasping loudly in her ears.
“Now you hang on to me.”
“To you?” Kerr disliked how the helmet amplified the obvious stress in her voice.
“Do you see anything else to hang on to?” Lusa sounded impatient.
Kerr complied, slipping her arms as platonically as possible around Lusa’s waist. It barely moved. Either she had subdermal armour implants or she did sit-ups like she had OCD.
Lusa didn’t seem concerned that her sister’s kidnapper now resembled an adorable rucksack. “Tighter. Or you’ll fall off on the corners.”
Kerr swallowed the voices telling her not to. How quickly reality had destroyed any semblance of dignity.
Lusa fired up the bike. The low rumble of the rotary engine against the bare bones chassis made Kerr feel things she shouldn’t, especially with her arms where they were. Lusa checked the throttle and the motor roared back playfully, like it knew her conflicted feelings. It mocked her.
“It’s just a physical response,” she whispered to herself. “It doesn’t mean anything.” If Lusa heard, she graciously kept it to herself.
Despite her best efforts, Kerr squealed embarrassingly when the bike leapt forward.
Gripping Lusa’s waist for dear life, propriety disappeared.
There existed only terror and exhilaration, her brain too full to reprimand herself for being swept up in each flex of Lusa’s torso as she dodged burning piles of rubble and twisted metal hurtling toward them at unfathomable speeds.
And then, just as abruptly, it stopped. Lusa parked across the street from NovAITech’s Model 2 Facility. The engine gave a final growl of protest before she killed the ignition. “You can let go now.”
Mortified that she’d had to mention it, Kerr relaxed her grip. “Where did you learn to drive like that?” her words stuttering through heavy breaths.
Lusa moved to unfasten the helmet. Kerr’s chin rose to meet her fingers without a thought.
“It’s my Aunt Sparx’s bike. She used to let me and Pinga ride it. Pinga’s a lot more reckless though.”
Kerr couldn’t imagine going any faster. Lusa helped lift the helmet off of her head and clipped it to her bike.
“What’s it like having a sister?”
Lusa eyed her sceptically before gathering her things from the bike. “Why do you care?”
“Just making conversation,” Kerr insisted, puffing out her chest, unsure why she felt the need to do so.
Lusa pulled her hair back into a bun after the bike ride had destroyed her ponytail. “We’re not that close.”
“But you showed up right away when we took her.”
“Pinga’s a reckless idiot, but she’s still my sister.” Lusa pulled a glove off with her teeth. “That’s what having a sister is like.”
The way Lusa’s teeth sunk into the expensive-looking synleather made Kerr flush. She quickly tried to find something else to focus on. “If you don’t like her, then…”
“Because she’d do the same for me.” Lusa fastened her knife belt. “Now it’s your turn. What’s the deal with you and Chalice?”
Kerr froze for a moment. She hadn’t been expecting the question, but it was only fair.
What was the deal between her and Chalice?
She didn’t even try to go after Kerr once she left.
And Kerr ended up in her bed the same as a dozen other women – occasionally and with no expectations.
Quite literally just a physical response.
Kerr exhaled like it was complicated, only it wasn’t. The only way it was is if you deluded yourself into thinking Chalice cared for anyone but herself. “Chalice took over after you murdered Piston.”
“Not you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why didn’t you take over?” Lusa checked her knives. “You did all the talking during our…trade.”
The trade was odd, but only because Chalice had to improvise. Kerr shook her head. “She’s better at leading. And she’s his daughter, yeah?”
“Nepotism? That’s how your gang works?”
Sharing details was probably unwise, but it served her right for starting the conversation. “His death caught us off guard. He was the one who organised everyone and no-one thought about what would come after.” She shrugged. “Cinder tried to take over, but everyone blamed him for what happened.
“The one who attacked me,” Lusa said.
“Yeah.” She’d seen it a hundred times, but Lusa saying it out loud narrowed the entire chain of events to a singular origin point.
“The Styx started making moves immediately. They had a new leader. We’d never heard of her before.
Ex-Natalist, we think because they started up a breeding program.
” Kerr leaned against the bike. “It didn’t go far. ”