Fourteen
FOURTEEN
Isako’s scripline, she’s relieved to discover, still covers medical care from any Company provider.
She wouldn’t have put it past Director Minto to have those benefits shut off, leaving her to die of fatal injuries if she were to botch her assignment.
The nearest urgent care clinic in Field Transport is small and sparsely staffed, with yellowed plaster walls and a pungent smell of disinfectant that unsuccessfully masks the scent of mildew.
The sort of place that takes care of the poor deckhand-class wagefolk who don’t have the authorization to go elsewhere.
The medic adeptly seals Isako’s knife wound, gives her fluids, and tells her that although she doesn’t need a transfusion, she’s going to be sore for several days and will need to stay off her feet and refrain from exerting herself. Isako smirks at this advice.
Kob waits patiently in the lobby. When Isako comes back out, he gets to his feet and offers to accompany her home, to make sure she returns safely. When she tells him that she’s taken up temporary residence in a hotel next to SoCon GasPro headquarters, he frowns.
“That’s far away, it’s late, and you’re not in the best shape right now,” he says. “My place is right around the corner. Why don’t you crash on my sofa tonight and take your time getting back tomorrow. I’ll even make you breakfast. I have fresh eggs.”
“I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” she mutters. It’s way past when she would like to be unconscious, and now that the adrenaline has leached out of her, she’s exhausted and would like to lie down on the floor. “I already owe you big-time for bailing me out of a tight spot tonight.”
“If you owe me anything, it’s a proper chance to catch up. I’ve been worried about you ever since I heard about Greves resigning.”
Chagrined, she says, “Thanks for your message earlier. Sorry I didn’t reply. Things have been crazy. And complicated.”
“We can talk about it in the morning. After all these years, you can spare a few hours before you rush off on whatever assignment got you knifed tonight, can’t you?” He phrases it as an invitation but gives her a look that suggests he’s not taking no for an answer.
Isako relents. She honestly isn’t feeling steady enough for the trip back to an empty hotel room, and besides, she does want to talk to Kob and find out what happened to him.
How could one of the most renowned atiers in the Agency have lost his badge?
She can barely comprehend it. She would’ve imagined she would sink to being a freelancer before he did.
Kob doesn’t look sick or disabled or otherwise unable to work, and he doesn’t seem beaten down by his situation either.
His calmly immovable presence, like that of a mountain on the plain, is the same as she remembers.
And he did promise her fresh eggs. She can’t square the contradiction of him having fallen so far in status but also indulging in such an expensive luxury. Fresh eggs! How long has it been since she’s had fresh eggs?
Kob’s apartment is the corner unit on the ground floor of a yellow low-rise walk-up apartment building that houses mostly Field Transport workers.
A couple of freelancers huddle on the curb, sharing a smoke.
Uniformed wagemen are leaving for early morning shifts.
One of them waves to Kob and he waves back genially.
These are people Kob would’ve never associated with before, who would’ve feared him.
Kob hesitates for a moment outside his door before unlocking it with a physical key instead of his missing badge. “It’s not much,” he explains, waving her inside, “but it’ll do you for tonight.”
The place is smaller than Isako’s hotel room and feels like a closet compared with where she remembers Kob used to live—in a three-floor suite filled with expensive belongings and attached to a garage with a private car.
It’s reasonably well heated, though, and tidy.
Not merely tidy—practically spartan. The apartment contains a single bed, a sofa, a couple of well-cared-for houseplants, and a rack of home workout equipment next to the galley kitchen’s narrow counter.
“Make yourself at home.” Kob hands her an old T-shirt, way too large for her. “I know it won’t fit, but it might feel better than sleeping in bloodstained clothes.”
Isako thanks him and retreats to the bathroom, which doesn’t have a running shower, but does have a suspended water storage tank and a sprayer.
She feels bad about using any of his stored rations, so she peels off her clothes, stiff and caked with dried blood, and washes as quickly and sparingly as she can.
She puts the oversized shirt on over her underwear and knots it around her midriff so she doesn’t feel as if she’s swimming in it, then goes out to the sofa and collapses on it.
Kob is already sound asleep, snoring gently. He’s left a pillow and blankets for her.
Isako wishes she could fall asleep as quickly.
Considering how exhausted she is, she ought to be able to pass out immediately, but her mind won’t stop churning, replaying everything that’s happened in the last several days in an anxiety-inducing loop.
She used to be able to sleep whenever she needed, snatching precious minutes while in cars, on the tram, anywhere and anytime she wasn’t working.
Now, whenever she’s stressed or in a new place, she sleeps poorly.
She’s close to resorting to sleepstims, which many contractors younger than her already rely upon daily, but she doesn’t want to become an addict.
She does fall asleep at last, after half an hour of listening to Kob’s breathing and the unfamiliar sounds of noisy central heating and unexplained building creaks.
When she awakens, she has no idea where she is or what time it is.
It takes her a minute to remember what happened the night before.
The room is still dark, and she realizes why when she sits up and notices that heavy curtains are drawn over the single small window above Kob’s neatly made bed.
Kob is dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed, reading from a printed book.
Text inked onto many pages of paper made of straw or bamboo pulp and held together on one side with cloth and glue—the sort of thing historical hobbyists like to create and collect behind glass but never actually read.
“How can you read off paper in the dark?” Her tongue feels heavy in her mouth.
“There’s a little light,” he says, indicating the sliver of sunlight coming from between the curtains before closing the book and placing it carefully on his bedside table. “Figured it would do you good to sleep for as long as you could. How’re you feeling?”
Isako considers. The deep sleep has done her good, but her body feels like a collection of bruised bones in a skin sack.
She’d like to lie back down and remain motionless for the rest of the day.
And this is after a minor run-in with a knife and a metal bar, not even a major disaster like that period after the Winter Merger ambush when she was in the hospital for two weeks.
Now everything hurts more and for longer, and she suspects she’s going to feel shitty for days.
“I’m all right,” she lies. “Feeling a lot better.”
Kob gets up and opens the curtains, letting in the sunlight, weak and dirty white as the color of the walls. They both squint at the light. “What time is it?” Isako asks.
“About thirteen thirty,” Kob tells her. When Isako groans in despair at the lateness of the hour and tries to get off the sofa too quickly, he says, “Whoa, take it easy,” and motions for her to remain seated while he goes into the kitchen and starts preparing food.
“I’ve wasted half the day,” she laments, rubbing her temples. She feels abruptly self-conscious about her appearance. Her ordinarily full and lustrous hair, her best attribute, feels flat and greasy. She tries, unsuccessfully, to comb it out with her fingers before tying it back in frustration.
“You didn’t waste it. You were recovering. That was the best use of your time today.” He cracks two eggs into a frying pan and the sizzle makes Isako’s mouth water. She has no recollection of Kob knowing how to cook and says so.
“Never used to,” he admits. The kitchen is too small for him.
He can barely move around in it without bumping into the counters and cabinets, but somehow he manages.
“Sheila used to do the cooking for the kith. She enjoyed it and was good at it. I didn’t have the time or the interest. You know how it is.
Wasn’t home enough to get in the habit. I had to figure it out. ”
“You and Sheila aren’t together anymore?” Isako remembers Kob’s wife as being a vivacious woman, quick to laugh and quick to tease, who worked on curriculum development in the Education division. They seemed like such a good match.
Kob shakes his head, not sadly or angrily, just as a statement of fact. “She moved on. Just as well.”
Isako understands. “Same with me and Tai.”
“Sorry to hear it,” Kob says, sliding the eggs onto two plates.
“The edge life doesn’t exactly make people like us reliable spouses, does it?
I transferred out of the kith before all this went down.
” He gestures vaguely to indicate his situation, an atier without a client.
Save for the mystique and the longknife, a ronin is little better than any freelancer.
“No biokids, fortunately. Better to simply cut ties.”
She remembers couples dinners, way back when—she and Tai, Kob and Shelia. They took turns hosting, cheerfully trying to outdo each other. Meat and wine. Chocolate. Coffee. All the expensive stuff. Long, enjoyable conversations. Later on, Maya running underfoot in her stockings.