Chapter 67: My favorite~
-Thuk-!
The hook bit the parapet near the roofline of the penthouse while I stood on the roof of the 8-story apartment building on the other side of the road.
And the moment the cable came taut, I wiped my own weight down to nothing and let the launcher yank me home.
The building dropped away underneath in one long rush, while the wind screamed off the helmet, and I let the hook loose and reeled it in halfway through, letting the momentum carry me the rest of the way.
Then I glided.
Up past the balcony’s glass rail, up past the infinity pool sitting there blue and completely ridiculous, and at the top of the arc I feathered the whole thing down, my boots touching the deck with no sound at all.
"Nikki!"
Nora came across the balcony at a dead sprint, cap brim first, in a full-on bare hug hard enough to stumble me half a step back.
"Hey there, kid."
She got one arm around the plate rig and reached up with the other to pat Tikki’s head where he sat in the shoulder pocket, and the little guy struggled real hard to maintain the dignified persona of a public official he clearly thinks he is.
Less than an hour ago this girl had voted against me, and screamed at Nia loud enough to blow out a radio, and here she was trying to squeeze my organs out through my back.
But then again, that’s the beauty of Democracy. What happens in parliament stays in the parliament.
The glass pane between the balcony and the living room stood open, and I walked in out of the cold with Nora still attached to my arm and caught Nia’s father on the sofa.
He looked up the moment I came through, a skinny man somewhere in his fifties with the top of his head long gone and the brown hair at the sides doing what it could about it, round-rimmed glasses catching the light, and behind them a pair of sharp green eyes.
He was still wearing the white coat.
Nobody in this world was stupid enough to shoot a doctor, especially this early, with everybody still busy being people; that coat was better armor than anything I had on under my jacket.
He opened his mouth, and I got there first.
"Look, I know..." I peeled the helmet off and set it on the counter. "If I have an extra enhancer lying around, I’d give it to you... You can do whatever with it. Though I’d rather you used it on yourself. We could really use a trauma surgeon with a boosted brain..."
The man closed his mouth and nodded at me once, and went back to whatever he’d been staring at before I arrived.
[...Not much of a talker, this one.]
Nia had taken the bar for herself, perched on a stool with Kara’s laptop open in front of her and her messy black hair still doing whatever it wanted, scrolling through something with her chin propped on one hand.
And Tikki flowed straight out of my pocket, across the counter, and settled himself down at her elbow like he’d been doing it his whole life.
[...Oh, so we’re just open about it now?]
"So...?"
"Everything your girl downloaded before the towers went quiet..." Nia didn’t look up. "There’s Medicine, engineering, agriculture, veterinary, water treatment... about nine hundred textbooks in here."
"Anything good?"
"Depends... There’s also four hundred and some romance novels, every last one of which appears to feature one girl and no fewer than five guys."
"They’re the epitome of drama... you wouldn’t understand," Kara said, from the kitchen doorway, without one shred of shame anywhere in her voice.
"Sure they are." I grinned at her. "Mine were too."
"Your favorite is six cowgirls... in a farmhouse."
"And it was the purest form of art... every word of it."
"You’re both degenerates." Nia shook her head as though she wrote the bible herself and went back to her screen.
While Kara crossed the living room, her long brown hair wooshing with the movement the way it always did.
"You’re fifteen minutes late." She said, stopping in front of me with both eyebrows up and her arms folded.
"...Traffic."
Kara looked at me for a second longer, then unfolded her arms, sighed deeply, and hugged me, quick and hard, and when she let go, she was already turning away.
"Come on, I made you some grilled chicken sandwiches..."
"My favorite~"
"I know..." She said over her shoulder with a small smile and walked into the kitchen, and I followed her in.
The plate came down in front of me on the dining table, and I was already two bites deep before she’d finished sitting.
"They’re good."
"Nora helped too..."
"Let me guess," I chuckled around a mouthful, "... she grilled them."
"How’d you know?" Kara’s eyebrow went up as she settled into the chair across from me.
I turned the sandwich over and showed her the underside, which looked more like charcoal than bread.
"Oh shit." She was up and out of the chair immediately. "I really didn’t notice!"
"It’s fine..." I waved a hand at her, still laughing.
She made me new ones anyway, checking both sides twice, and set them down in front of me, and I went at them like a man who had spent an entire lifetime believing he would never be able to again.
"Nikki..." Kara said. "We need to talk."
"Sup..."
"How long will things go like this?"
Her voice had gone somewhere I didn’t like.
"Hmm?"
"For how long are you and Nia going to murder innocent people simply because they have what you want... even though you can get it from the system..."
I stopped mid-bite.
And her hands were on the table in front of her, both of them, curled into fists so tight the knuckles had gone pale.
"I supported you this time, and maybe I’ll do it a few more times, because I get where you’re coming from... I really do," Kara went on, eyes into mine, "But there’s only so much my conscience can take, Nikki. Leo’s plan was good enough... You didn’t go for it simply because it wasn’t convenient enough for you... Nikki, I-"
Her voice went out from under her on the last word.
While I put the sandwich down on the plate.
"That sick bay under the stairs cost me thirty thousand five hundred and fifty Credits," I said, taking a sip of water. "A Sprinter pays two hundred... a Shambler would one hundred. So that box in the corner of our living room is a hundred and fifty-three kills. The System bills me like a contractor... materials, labor, engineering, it charges for every single thing it can charge me for... Now price out a fortress. Walls, borewells, power, a greenhouse, and a winter of food for six people. That’s fifteen to sixteen thousand Infected minimum, and that’s assuming nothing goes wrong..."
Kara didn’t argue with even a word of it.
She just sat there with her hands still in fists, waiting, because none of that had been what she asked me. And I knew she would not move without her answer.
"...Until we’re self-sufficient," I said quietly.
"A-and when does that happen?"
"When we get to Leo’s village." I turned the plate a little on the table without eating anything off it. "Doesn’t matter if his folks are still there or not... that’s where we’d set up camp. His village is pretty rural... low population density... doesn’t have lakes and shit that’d pull the Infected in. But there’s a big underground reservoir under it. I can put in borewells... I’ll set up a proper fortress there that we can go inside and never come out of."
"I thought we were going to Ashport... to get your old crew."
"Yeah, once I’ve set you guys up... I’m going straight there."
"Alone..." Kara leaned back into her chair, and every bit of tension went out of her at once, arms limp in her lap but not with relief.
"Kara... It’s going to be hell on earth out there from both the Infected and the Survivors’ side of things, and not to mention when spring comes-"
"So basically you’ll never stop." She cut me off without any heat in it at all. "We just won’t be there to vote against it."
"Not true," I said, leaning forward. "I’m doing this right now because we’re running short on time... Fifteen to twenty days before winter sets in proper and the first snow falls. Point is... With just Nia and me, none of this applies... I can pop an Infected from a hundred meters out and buy our food and ammo straight off the System. Two people on the move don’t need a mountain of loot."
"But then I’ll be worried about enemy factions and... a-and..." She didn’t finish that one either.
"Kara..."
"Nikki, just tell me one thing."
She leaned forward across the table, both elbows on it, and looked straight into my eyes with those warm brown ones of hers that wanted something from me I no longer had.
"Will I ever get the old Nikki back? Even just a bit? The Nikki I..."
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out of it.
And before I knew it, my chin started going, small and stupid and impossible to stop, even my throat closed up somewhere in the middle while the words piled up behind it and stayed there.
I just sat in that kitchen with a plate of my favorite food in front of me and could not make one single sound come out.
I tried keeping eye contact, looked at her for as long as I could stand it.
But I lost that fight, and my eyes fell back on the plate instead. And before I knew it, I had a sandwich in both hands, and a large bite in my mouth.
I ate like a man with somewhere to be.
And I didn’t stop eating, because then I would have nothing to do with my mouth except speak...
Across the table, Kara’s eyes finally left me as she leaned back into the chair with nothing left holding her up, while a small sound came out of her, half a breath and half a laugh, every bit of it aimed at herself.
While I just kept eating, having long stopped tasting anything.