Burn Code

Madeline Lansing’s vest saved my life. The slug buried itself in the layers of the ceramic-embedded fibers, slowing it that only the tip bulged against my sternum.

It was still enough impact to give me a bruise the size of a small melon and crack a couple of ribs. The concussion force of the impact shocked my TPU into an offline state and hitting the concrete skull first kept me in bed with a migraine three days straight.

My neck would be a lovely shade of purple for a very long time thanks to Grendel, or rather, Alan Pallesen.

I made out better than Paul. Pallesen’s spike damaged his nanoshunts to the point the doctors had to shut down the TPU to give his tissues a chance to heal. They predicted a recovery of about seventy percent usage to reroute the rest afterwords.

The eye would take longer. Cleaned and packed, the socket remained bandaged until his neural pathways had recovered enough to accept a replacement.

When he made it home from his week-long stay in the hospital, I was waiting for him on his overstuffed couch.

Paul spooked when he saw my shape, his hand moving for a gun that wasn’t at his hip. He had been disarmed and put on disability leave.

“By all means, do a little B and E.” He said after a long moment once he recognized me.

“You’ve got nothing worth stealing.” I lifted the glass in my hand. “Except maybe your liquor supply.”

Paul didn’t answer. His bag hit the floor with a dull thud.

“How are you?” I asked after the silence stretched on for far too long.

He chewed on what he wanted to say as he avoided looking at me.

“I don’t know.” He finally said with a half of a strangled laugh. The tension drained from him. “My tech is dead to the world and one of my eyes is in an evidence bag. I really don’t know, Cara.”

“Reasonable answer.” I shrugged, pouring more into my glass from the bottle on the coffee table. I lifted it towards him. “Want one?”

“I’ll have a sip of yours.” A sip turned into half its contents as he sat on the edge of the table in front of me. “I shouldn’t with all the junk they have me on, but dammit.”

Paul absently stared at his hands. Tremors rippled through his fingers. Part of it was the aftermath of the spike and damaged nerve tissue. The rest was Paul himself. He rubbed his palms along his thighs before he caught my eyes. A small nervous smile dimpled his cheeks.

I stared into my glass. “What do you remember?”

Paul sighed. “Not much. I was here, then I woke up at that warehouse. Lansing must have put a sleeper on me.”

“Did she have access to do that?”

He shrugged. “She ran dispatch so she knew exactly where I was and how to contact me. I’m sure the internal investigation will figure it out, but I bet she hacked the database for the codes.”

Paul clutched at the wood on either side of his legs. “I woke up strapped to that damned chair and he was, you know....”

He made a swirling motion around his bandaged face. The rest of him paled. “I was in and out after that.”

“I think she figured out what Pallesen was going to do and wanted no part of it.”

Nodding, he agreed. “I never talked to her much at the station, but she was a decent person. I’ve no idea how she got involved with him.”