First Breath: A Cyberpunk Novelette Read online

  The tank had an open top and was filled three quarters with a bluish liquid. The lights set into the bottom glowed around a woman barely covered by latex clothing, her features lost in the haze of the fluid.

  He looked back to Mara, and she nodded, keeping her distance.

  He reached into the tank. The lukewarm liquid tingled on his arms, and he wrapped them behind the small of her back, cradling her head with his hand. She was slight, but not young. Maybe Mara’s little sister, but not by much. She emerged from the tank, and Mara wrapped a blanket around her, covering her from head to toe. The girl shivered beneath it.

  “We don’t have much time,” Mara said. She was right. Hardy shifted the girl’s weight, and they made for the door.

  The hallway was empty. They would meet Les and Simek at the crown room. All they had to do was get out. But then something moved at the end of the hallway, a man entering from the side. His hand raised, a shot echoed. Hardy’s eyes locked with Mara’s as she stared into the distance.

  And then she fell.

  9

  LES’ VOICE CRIED FROM the hallway behind him. The killing gun was pointed at Hardy now, but he stood in place, the girl’s weight a thousand tons, staring down into the shock on Mara’s face. Something narrowly missed his head, but his focus stayed on her.

  Then the crack of a shot too close not to flinch, and at the top of his vision Hardy saw the shape of the gunman tumbling away from him, from them, even as his gaze never wavered from Mara’s body.

  Les rushed into view, dropping his gun beside her as he knelt, uttering the curses Hardy couldn’t bring to mind. He put his hand to her chest, wet with blood, then to her neck.

  Hardy’s eyes had followed hers as she fell. He’d watched them as they lost focus. He stood, the weight in his arms threatening to slip.

  “She’s gone, Hardy. We gotta go.”

  Memory after memory rushed back. The gaps filled and the monument of her loss settled on him. The girl’s weight was gone from his arms. Les held her now and Simek took his arm, nearly dragging him down the hallway as Mara’s crumpled body grew smaller.

  Guards filled the hall from other rooms and shots pinged against the walls. Survival instincts returned. They ran, and as they passed a doorway he glimpsed a room, an overturned chair, no sign of Jack now—that chance for revenge gone. Down the stairs, bullets ricocheting in front of them. The firing ceased when they cleared the second floor, but feet shuffled above them.

  They ran through the hallway and the exit before the guards made it down the steps. And they kept running. Through the alley where he had passed his test, when he was still suspicious of Mara’s intentions. When he’d thought she worked for Jack and refused to trust her. Down the streets where he had followed her only a day ago, still riding the newly discovered drug of her breath. Was that what made him follow?

  They passed the Narcs’ headquarters, where Z would surely lead Jack’s men. Z. Her sister wasn’t dead. He should have seen it. She was the leverage Jack held.

  When they stopped, Hardy didn’t know where they were, but he knew it didn’t matter. Mara was gone. He had lost her once, but had found her again. She had found him.

  Les laid the girl on the floor, cracking a glow stick for light while Simek walked toward Hardy, holding something in each hand. Crowns of tarnished copper and wires. They had gotten her out. They had her, and they had the crown.

  “Hey,” Simek said, holding out one of the copper domes. “This one’s yours.”

  Hardy held the dome in his hands and stared at it, no longer bothered if he never remembered anything.

  Les hovered over the rescued girl’s shaking body ten feet away. Simek patted him on the shoulder, trying in a gesture to express understanding of a pain he could never imagine. He went to Les with the crown.

  Hardy stood alone in his corner of the room reliving all of the memories he had only just regained. Their pact to bring Jack down. What he felt when she said his name.

  The crown clattered to the floor and Les cursed. “Hardy!”

  Hardy ran to her as the pieces fit together in his mind. The aspect-selective tests they performed clicked into place and memories of his last days at Jack’s returned. The way she disappeared so suddenly, when everything was going right.

  Mara lay shivering on the floor, barely covered by her latex clothes, hair purest black without the now-familiar pink stripes. He held her in his arms as she shivered, rubbed the debris of long containment from her eyes. Her body was thin, bones showing beneath atrophied muscle. Her eyes seemed distant as if her mind was in a fog. He held her face and stared into her, the broken woman he loved. “Mara?” he asked, tears in his own eyes.

  Her eyes focused, looked into his. Her body shivered in his arms and when she spoke it was with a sad tremor. “You came back.”

  Hardy pulled her close. With the memories returned, he knew what he almost lost, and tears stung on his cheeks. In that moment he knew only two things. He would take care of Mara and never leave her side, stand with her against anything that threatened to hurt her. The other was a primal anger he knew he couldn’t deny.

  Jack would pay.