Redstone Ch. 18 Pt 1

Notes: Aaand, new perspective! I think I've written more POVs in this story than in any other I've ever attempted. We're starting to wind things up, and yes, Robbie's situation is...mostly resolved. Enjoy!

Title: Redstone Chapter 18, Part 1

*** 

As soon as Isidore woke up, he knew something was wrong. Going down hadn’t been a surprise; Wyl had signaled that the prison was going to be gassed today, and Isidore had been careful to keep them down in the heart of the prison, veins prickling but heart easy in the knowledge that he, Kyle and, frustratingly, Pence would be safe from the chaos that was certain to emerge when people started waking up.

Pence’s adoption of their living quarters—not all the time, because after a while the iron got to him, but for a few hours every cycle—was annoying but not, Isidore had to admit, the worst thing he’d ever experienced. The man was a gifted storyteller and kept Kyle distracted, and he had more than a few skills that might be useful under the right circumstances. Not that it really mattered; as soon as Garrett had the information that Hummingbird was stealing out from under the nose of the Warden, he’d be able to negotiate for Kyle’s release. Perhaps another week, two at the outside, and they’d be free of this place. Pence wouldn’t be, though.

He’d given up the story of how he’d come to be here so easily that Isidore was more than half convinced it wasn’t true, but it was entertaining nonetheless. “I lived footloose and fancy free in the Central System for years,” he’d expounded while Isidore and Kyle had worked their way through some sticky meal bars. “Thanks to the help of a brilliant little bug I wrote, I worked out who in whatever city I’d have the best luck imitating, then did a bit of work on my appearance and passed myself off as them for a while. Businessmen, trust-funders, even politicians: people will give you a lot of leeway if they think you’re someone important. I hardly ever had to provide identification, in the small provinces. It was a glorious scam,” he said with a pleased sigh.

“Of course, eventually I imitated the wrong man. He caught me at it, actually; I was in one of his penthouses. He was supposed to be gone, but.” Pence shrugged. “Such is life. And after a bit of wrangling, I ended up here.”

“This doesn’t seem like the right place for someone who basically committed identity theft,” Kyle said doubtfully.

“Very astute, little lamb.” Pence refused to elaborate any further, though, but he gave them a wink to soften the lie. When they all fell down the next day, the sleeping gas working too fast for much preparation, Isidore spared a brief thought for how he might actually miss Pence once he and Kyle were out of here.

Pence was the farthest thing from Isidore’s mind when he woke up though, for all the man was mumbling a blue streak over knocking his head against the floor when he’d gone under. There was too much noise filtering down the passage, way too much for the aftermath of a gassing. This wasn’t prisoners fighting it out amongst themselves; this was a concerted effort by many against a few, and if he focused Isidore thought he could detect the whine of bot gears shifting too abruptly to be quiet.

“Fuck.” Something was wrong in the Pit, really wrong. His mind told him the best thing to do was wait down here where it was safe and ride it out, but his instincts were screaming at him to move. He reached out and shook Kyle’s shoulder; he was already awake, just looked a little blurry. Pence was still on his back, affected more by the gas. “Come on, we have to move.”

To his credit, Kyle just nodded. Isidore helped get him to his feet, then led the way down the hall, disruptor firmly in hand. If they were being swarmed by bots right now…

But no, no they weren’t. There was a swarm, for sure, but it was prisoners on guards. Isidore held Kyle back at the entrance to the Pit, staring disconcertedly out at the carnage taking place. It looked like two separate fights had been going on, although one was already over; he could smell the blood in the air, even if there wasn’t much to see over the wave of bodies. The other guard was still on his feet, but he had only one bot left. It was inevitable he’d die, at this point, despite how fiercely he…fought…

Recognition hit Isidore like a shot to the heart, and he actually lurched forward a step before he got control of himself again. Isidore recognized that fighting style; he’d seen it back on Paradise when he’d been a mechanic working on the Federation forces’ fleet of vehicles. Robbie. That was Robbie, which mean something had gone terribly, awfully wrong.

“Fuck.”

“What is it?” Kyle murmured, staying discreet even though he was clearly disturbed by the scene.

“Give me a moment; I need to think.” He couldn’t do anything, he couldn’t. Protecting Robbie wasn’t his mission. He had to take care of Kyle.

The bot went down, and Robbie was bowled over after another few seconds of fighting like a madman. Isidore almost bit through his tongue when he lost sight of him. No, no, nonono—

Then Rory happened, saving the day only to ruin things himself. Isidore knew he was breathing too fast, knew even as Kyle tugged at his arm, worried and wondering, that he was going to do it. He was going to spoil everything because he couldn’t just watch this, he wouldn’t. He’d sooner die himself.

“Stick with Pence,” Isidore heard himself say, the sound feeling very far away as he walked into the room. “Garrett will get you out.” He reached a hand up to his mouth, toward the tooth that would cause a big enough explosion to take out a good half of the people in the Pit. Rory wasn’t looking at him; no one was, all the focus on Robbie and the macabre scene playing out between the two men. He could do this. He had to.

The second before Isidore activated the grenade in his head, a shower of sparks erupted from the main door. It clanged to the ground a moment later, and a security bot rolled into the room. This bot was like none Isidore had ever seen, though; it had some weapons sticking out of it that were downright illegal for security bots, and even as Isidore ducked, it started to fire a mini-laser which burned tiny, perfect holes straight through people. “Alert! Alert! Sound the alarm! Alert! Alert! Sound the alarm!” it blared over and over, burning a swathe through the prisoners who dared to move toward it. It reached Robbie’s side and tore him out of Rory’s slack, astonished grasp, picking him up and cradling him even as it injected a syringe straight into Robbie’s neck. “There there. There there. There there.”

Rory growled and reached for Robbie again, and had a hole burned through his hand for his trouble. All around the Pit people were groaning in pain, most of them alive but all of them wounded. The bot swirled its head in a circle, eyestrip glowing menacingly as it surveyed the prisoners. It paused on Isidore, but moved on after a moment. “There there. There there. There there,” it repeated as it turned and rolled right out of the gaping hole it had left in the Pit, taking Robbie with it.

“What the bloody hell is going on here, petal?”

Pence’s voice shocked Isidore out of his fugue. He shook his head, silent as he weighed his options. This was…a fucking mess, was what it was. No guards were rushing in to shut things down, more than half the prison population was going to need Regen for bot-inflicted burns, and Robbie was possibly gravely injured. If Isidore waited to do this all the right way, the closest to legal way, there very well might be new leadership in place that would refuse any and all requests for transfers while they figured out what the hell had just gone down.

Isidore couldn’t take that risk. If not even Robbie was safe, then there was no way Kyle would survive that long, especially not with the prisoners in a state of upheaval. And besides…the door was open.

Isidore reached out and grabbed Kyle’s hand. “We’re getting out of here,” he said. He could still see the bot in the distance. If they stuck close to it, they could follow it through the doors. From there, he’d be able to find his way to the hangar. Robbie and Wyl’s ship would open to him, and if anyone was going to forgive him for an act of piracy, it was them. “Come on.”

Another hand found his. “You’re not going anywhere without me, darling,” Pence said grimly.

“Then shut up and keep up,” Isidore said, and he tugged them into a run as he chased down the bot. Hopefully it wouldn’t turn around and shoot him when it saw the three of them behind it.

Surprisingly, the bot led the way straight to the ship hangar. Wyl was already there, completely blind to everything except Robbie as he lurched forward toward his husband. “ZeeBee, status!”

“Alive and recovering. Currently, he is under the influence of Regen. Expected return to consciousness in three-point-seven standard hours.”

“Oh.” Wyl shuddered and leaned against the bot’s sturdy body, bringing his head close to Robbie’s. “All right. All right. Fuck, it’s all right.”

“Not completely,” Isidore said. He could see it took effort, but Wyl eventually lifted his head and looked at him. “Hi.”

“Oh. Oh, shit, Isidore!” He was being hugged before he could stop it, something that was sure to cause conniptions in the central security room, but Isidore couldn’t care less. “Fuck, are you okay? What are you doing here?”

“Seizing the day,” Isidore said, feeling a little like falling apart now that he was in friendly arms. “There’s bound to be an inquest, they’ll ask questions, it isn’t safe—it never was, but now—”

“No, you’re right,” Wyl agreed, finally letting him go to look at his companions. “Mr. Alexander. And…”

“Pence, mate.” He almost sounded normal. “Just Pence.”

Wyl looked at Isidore. “He’s with you?”

“He is now.” Whether Isidore wanted it or not, apparently.

“Then he’ll come along. Let’s kick this shithole to the curb. ZeeBee,” Wyl addressed the bot, “get Robbie situated in the ship. You guys, follow him. I’ll be right there.”

“What are you going to do?” Isidore asked.

Wyl smiled darkly. “Since there’s no reason to be subtle anymore, I’m gonna kill every fucking camera and tracking system in this fucking place before we leave. Let them try to send someone after us once I’ve punched their eyes out. Go, go.” He waved them toward his and Robbie’s little ship, then headed to the nearest control panel.

Isidore followed ZeeBee on board, still clinging to Kyle and Pence. They settled into the tight quarters right behind the pilot’s chair, and Pence turned to Isidore with a raised eyebrow. “Interesting friends you’ve got, my dove.”

“You have no idea,” Isidore said dryly.

“We’re really leaving?” Kyle asked. He sounded dumbfounded. “Right now?”

“It’s an opportunity we might not get again.”

“But what about my lawyer? And what about—” He stopped speaking when Isidore shook his head.

“They’ll weather the storm better than we would. This is just a course change, Kyle. We’re not throwing away the map.”

“What map, pet?”

Isidore breathed a sigh of relief when Wyl joined them, firing up the engines and heading for the nearest airlock, which opened obediently to his command. “The one that leads to the end.”

Whatever that was, now.

Redstone Ch. 16 Pt 2

Notes: What a morning. Seriously. I'm not entirely sure I'm going to make my afternoon clients, given how the roads are right now, and the fact that I'm driving in a spare. Because REASONS, because karma, because flat tires on snowy days, joy joy joy. I want to punch something, but my hands are too cold.

Anyway. Our last Tamara segment: from here we move on to Robbie, who...oh, baby. What have I done to you?

Title: Redstone Chapter 16, Part 2

*** 

One of the enduring fads on Pandora was an incessant fascination with all things Old Earth. Naturals were, in some ways, the most Old Earth of any people alive in the universe today. They, like pre-Regen Earthlings, had to heal the old-fashioned way, with time and care. They got sick, they got broken, they fought through pain and physical and mental hardship in a way that few people on Regen had to concern themselves with. There were the occasional Regen-ready individuals whose body chemistry was so turbulent it led them to physical harm, but they were rare.

That fad facilitated the creation of the Library, a building in Pandora City dedicated to Old Earth memorabilia and mementos. It had media in it that was inaccessible with an implant; you had to actually hold the books in your hand to read them, or play the various types of discs in ancient machines. There were traditional clothes from over a hundred Old Earth countries, and games and dolls and shows of all sorts.

A popular fascination during the early twenty-first century in some Old Earth countries had revolved around creatures called zombies. Tamara tried, but she couldn’t quite divorce herself from being ginger and quiet as she stepped around fallen bodies in the halls. If she imagined herself holding a katana while she did it, that was her own business.

ZeeBee trailed along just behind her, silent except for the whirr of his wheels. She got to the admin halls without difficulty, and wound her way to Warden Harrison’s office as quickly as she could. His door was locked. Oh, of course it was.

Tamara pressed the disc, which she’d stuck to the end of her index finger, to the pad outside the Warden’s office as she checked the time with her implant. Twenty-six more minutes. She should be able to finish this well within the half hour time limit.

The pad suddenly glowed, and the door to the office slid open. Tamara stepped inside and made a face. There was something about the Warden, some faint undertone to his scent that made her think of desiccation. Maybe he kept his clothes vacuum sealed, maybe he forbid the cleaning bots from entering his rooms. Whatever it was, it made her nose itch. She did her best to ignore it as she hastened to the desk in front of her. Warden Harrison was slumped over it, obscuring the control panel on the desk.

“ZeeBee, can you move him?”

“Yes.” She waited, but nothing happened.

“Oh.” Darn these literal bots. “ZeeBee, move the Warden out of the way.”

“Affirmative.” The bot slid his arms underneath the man and laid him out on the floor just to the side of the desk. Tamara took his place, wincing at the smear of drool that hit her fingers as she touched the surface of the pad.

“Nasty.” Nevertheless, she pressed her index finger down hard and waited for the program to access Harrison’s personal files.

There were a lot of them. Tamara narrowed her eyes as she stared at the flashing screen. Wyl seemed to have chosen to take way more information than they could possibly use rather than banking on getting too specific and finding nothing, and so everything was being copied and stored on the tiny chip, and from there to several of their personal devices. It was the best way to be sure they got what they needed, but it also took more time than Tamara really liked, especially since she still had to wipe the footage. ZeeBee would help with that, though.

Twenty minutes left. Seventeen…the program indicated it was finished before its tiny icon, a laughing flame, vanished with a virtual poof. Tamara found her way to the camera feeds, then stood up and turned to ZeeBee. “Okay.” She held her arms out from her sides. “Scan me.”

Using a completely current image of her was the only way to be sure they were actually getting her out of the visual feeds. Tamara had been prepared to use a saved image from her implant, but since Wyl had come through with the bot, she didn’t have to. She turned and ZeeBee scanned, a brief flash of green light indicating it was done, and then he stuck the very tip of one of his probes against the panel. Tamara watched as the program winnowed through the footage of her, everything from the moment before the gas was deployed to now, and deleted it. She was erased from the next thirteen minutes of future footage as well, which was a problem she’d solve by taking off her jacket to change her physical profile, just in case the time ran out faster than they’d intended. ZeeBee cleared itself as well, and Tamara grinned as she removed the tiny chip and stuck it beneath her collar.

“Perfect. Let’s get back to the infirmary.” She headed for the office door. The bot didn’t follow.

“ZeeBee?” It didn’t respond, just stared at the camera feed for a long moment. All of a sudden the alarm in the top of its head started going off, startling Tamara so badly she almost fell.

“Baby protocol discontinued! Alpha protocol engaged!” ZeeBee turned and shot past her down the hall, zipping around bodies like it was a sport. Tamara watched it go in complete astonishment, which turned to horror when she heard Warden Harrison groan. Oh, fuck. Fuck. The gas was wearing off early, and ZeeBee was waking people up with his noise. Tamara ran down the admin hall as fast as she could, tracing her path back to the infirmary. She had to get there before Doctor Kleinman woke up, she had to—shit, she had to make sure Wyl was all right, what else could the alpha protocol be?

Tamara was breathing hard again by the time she got back to the infirmary, but while people were stirring, no one was entirely awake yet. She pulled off her jacket, lay down on the floor close to where she’d been with ZeeBee and then, for good measure, smacked her head against the wall hard enough to make herself see stars. That hadn’t been in the original plan, but she needed to make sure no suspicions came her way. It helped that the doctor was so vehemently anti-natural, but it paid to be certain. Dizzy and worried, she calmed her breathing as best she could and waited.

“What in the name of…oh, good grief!” She heard the doctor push himself up off the floor. Demarcos followed with a grunt a moment later, and then cold fingers pressed against the pulse point in her throat. Tamara whimpered.

“Just what I need, another—” They’d never find out what derogatory thing he needed, because at that moment another alarm went off, this one rippling through the walls. Tamara recognized it. It was the alarm that sounded when there was a riot in the prison. “I don’t have time to deal with her; put her back in her room! I’ll return presently!” Doctor Kleinman rushed off, and a moment later a much warmer set of hands found their way under her head.

“Hey,” Demarcos murmured. “Tamara. You okay? Tamara, talk to me, damn it.”

“Mm fine,” she whispered, even though she wasn’t. “Take me to the general infirmary, not the private room.”

“Tamara—”

“I need to see if someone is there. Please.” She wasn’t too proud to beg. She’d have kept at it until he agreed out of sheer exhaustion, but Demarcos just rolled his eyes.

“Of course you do,” he said. “You’re more cryptic than the president himself, you know that?”

“There’s no need to be rude,” Tamara said, but she smiled a little bit regardless. “Thank you.”

“You owe me so many explanations.” He sounded angry, but he was gentle as he assisted her to her feet and put one of her arms over his shoulders. It was a bit of a stretch but she didn’t say anything, just let him lead her like a docile little child into the larger treatment room in the infirmary, where the Regen beds were kept.

She actually went a bit limp with relief when she saw Wyl lying there, one hand rubbing his throat, the other looking around curiously. He smiled politely when he saw the two of them, giving no indication he’d ever seen either of them before. “Hi there. What the hell happened, huh?”

Fortunately, Demarcos set Tamara down right next to Wyl, where she could make a bit of conversation about what really interested her. “Where’s ZeeBee?” she asked, almost soundlessly.

A slightly panicked look came into Wyl’s eyes. “ZeeBee was supposed to find you! Didn’t…what about…”

“ZeeBee did find me. It was very helpful, but...it ran off at the end! Something about alpha protocol, I thought that meant ZeeBee would be back here with you.”

Wyl frowned. “Alpha protocol comes into play in case of imminent physical damage for the primaries, that’s me and Robbie. But I’m fine, and Robbie should be…” Wyl didn’t just panic this time, he went completely white. “Oh, fuck. Robbie’s on duty. He’d on fucking duty and now there’s a riot, what if he was in the Pit when the gas went off? When did ZeeBee leave?”

“Right after we finished with the visual feeds.”

“ZeeBee must have seen something happening to Robbie.” Wyl got up like he was going to march off into the penitentiary himself, but Tamara jerked him back onto the bed. Demarcos watched the two of them like they were both crazy.

“Running around busting doors down to go after Robbie will only draw attention,” she whispered. “If ZeeBee saw something, it’ll hand it. Besides, Magpie is in there. He can help Robbie.”

“How?” Wyl demanded. “How can he possibly handle anything without blowing his cover? Robbie us a guard; no prisoner stands up for guards. He’s going to be killed.”

“You don’t know that,” she insisted. We don’t know anything, she thought, a bit helplessly. At this point, all she could do was keep Wyl from ruining the game.

Robbie would have to look after himself.

Redstone Ch. 15. Pt. 1

Notes: Aaand thus we start the inexorable slide into the American holiday season. This Thursday is Thanksgiving, which will be a pretty easy event for us--ie we're not cooking--but life in general will get busier. I know that's true for a lot of you, so thanks for finding the time to read along. I am very thankful for my wonderful readers, guys, so... *hugshugshugs*

Title: Redstone Chapter 15, Part 1.

*** 

Today was the day. Wyl was nervous; not a strange reaction to the beginning of what he hoped would be the end, but he was feeling it more than he thought he would.

It would all come down to timing, every piece of the puzzle having to snap into place at just the right time. There was a little leeway in a few places; as long as Wyl got to the infirmary before Tamara, he could plant the data chip in the drop spot for her. Then she’d need to get to it before anyone else found it or it was cleared away, but she seemed confident that she could. The chip was smaller than a fingernail and completely transparent, so the odds of someone else finding it when they weren’t actively looking weren’t good, so. They had some breathing room there.

After that it was up to Tamara. She was the one who’d been spending time in the administrative wing, so she had the best idea of when to open all the vents and trigger the gas so that the fewest people would be between her and Warden Harrison. Once the gas was set off, people would fall where they stood and be out for a good half an hour, or at least that was what Robbie thought. There were uncertainties there as well. The supply of gas was finite, and it would be dispersed throughout a wider portion of the prison than usual, so it was entirely possible that it would be less potent than the data suggested. Half an hour wasn’t much time for Tamara to break into Harrison’s office, steal the data she needed to and wipe the cameras. Less time than that meant her success would be a toss-up.

If it all went well, then they’d get hard evidence of malfeasance to Garrett by the end of the day, and be off this fucking rock in another 48 hours. If it didn’t…well, Wyl didn’t care to think about that. He didn’t have time to think about it, either. It was time to get this caper started, and that meant getting hit in the face. Thank fuck Robbie was on shift right now.

“ZeeBee,” he told his robot, whose eyestrip shifted obediently to face him. “Enact one-time only five second delay on defensive protocols.”

ZeeBee’s strip dimmed. “Defensive protocols are not to be tampered with, per previous commands.”

Wyl frowned. “What commands?”

“Per Christopher Robin’s alpha command. As follows: ZeeBee, no matter what, don’t let Wyl talk you into turning off your protections, okay? You stay on him and you watch him and don’t let anybody hurt him.”

It was creepy; ZeeBee even did Robbie’s voice perfectly. Wyl hadn’t known these robots had that capability. It would be cooler to have found out when Robbie wasn’t cockblocking his plan, though. “Override Christopher Robin’s alpha command, authorization Wyl-bonder-thirteen. Enact previously stated delay on defensive protocols.”

“Five second delay enacted. Per Christopher Robin’s beta command, I am instructed to tell you: goddammit, Wyl, don’t be an idiot.”

Wyl grinned, shaking his head as he battled with the nerves that made his hands want to tremble. “Thanks, ZeeBee.”

So much that could go wrong here…it wouldn’t take a lot of digging to work out that he’d built the chip if it was found, and if that happened, then it would be easy to dump Wyl and Robbie in the depths of Redstone to fight it out long before Garrett could do anything about it. Not to mention Tamara, who as a natural had far fewer of the inbuilt resources that the rest of them had. She would be royally fucked, and then Kyle would never get out of here and Isidore’s faith would be repaid with utter chaos.

Wyl wondered, not for the first time, if Garrett really understood what he asked of people. He was clearly getting used to maneuvering on a grander scale than Wyl could see. He wondered, when would they stop being his friends, and start being pieces on a board?

Not fair, he chided himself. Garrett was a spoiled, elitist jackass sometimes, but he never evaded his responsibilities and he never forgot about his friends and family. There was no doubt that he loved his husband and kid more than anything, and the rest of them, those who had been brought into the sphere of his affections; they were more than lip service. Wyl knew that; it was just hard to remember it sometimes, when they were so far apart, and things seemed so fraught.

Nah, it’d be fine. Or at least, it would if Wyl got himself carried to the clinic in the next five minutes or so. He reached over to his Morse machine and tapped out a final message: Going now. Ten-fifteen minutes.

Understood. Good luck.

Nice and succinct, good. Wyl made sure the chip was securely attached to the back side of his earlobe, then headed for the door of their apartment. It was time to pick a fight.

He was in luck today. Of his two most forward suitors, if violent-minded rapists could be called that, only one of them was downstairs in the common room, zoned out in front of the holoscreen. There were a few other men there with him, but Wyl didn’t care about them. They might follow the man’s lead, but Wyl had ZeeBee as his ace in the hole.

He walked down the stairs to the main floor, and made it almost all the way to the lounge in the center of the room before the man—what was his name, Fortay, that was it, Horace Fortay—even noticed him. And then when he did notice him, well. Wyl hardly had to do any work at all.

“He lives!” Fortay said, grinning widely. Nobody should have a mouth that wide. At further glance, Wyl could see that the edges of his lips had been cut and extended, deliberately creating the skin-tight rictus effect he was seeing now. It was one of the simpler, creepier mods he’d ever seen on a person. “Hey there, little lady. Are you looking for you daddy?”

“No,” Wyl said, affecting a sigh. “He’s working and I’m bored in our rooms.”

“Well, sweetheart.” If his grin had stretched any further it would have overtaken the rest of his face. “Why don’t you come and sit down next to me? I’ll keep you company until your daddy comes back.”

“Thanks,” Wyl said with a simper. He sat down on the edge of the lounge and scooted in toward the middle, where Fortay was spread out. The man reached a hand out, grabbed his upper arm and pulled him in even closer, until Wyl was reluctantly plastered against the man’s hard, bony chest.

“There, baby,” Fortay murmured. His breath smelled like stimulants and burnt hair. Wyl didn’t want to imagine what he’d been eating. “S’better like this, yeah? You wanna get a little more comfortable?” He pressed his groin against Wyl’s hip; he was already hard. Fuck, what kind of drugs was this guy on? Did he walk around with a perpetual boner? “We could get really comfortable. I could show you a real man’s cock, not that old, gray thing you’re used to.”

Oh, so astonishingly original. Wyl was already done with this. He pursed his lips and pretended to think about it. “Hmm, we could. Except I think my eyes might fall out of their fucking sockets if I have to look at what you’re deluded enough to call a real man’s cock.”

Fortay was caught off guard, his jaw actually dropping. One of the onlookers laughed nervously. “I mean,” Wyl continued, warming to his subject, “you look like more of a stretcher than a fattener, so you’ve either got a filament-thin little poker of a dick coiled up in your mommy’s underwear or it’s long and floppy and hangs down to your knees, but I can’t get any traction with that, if you know what I mean.”

“Wha—you—my dick ain’t fucking modded, you little cocksucker!”

Wyl smirked as he eased back toward the edge of the lounge. “Oh no? Then I guess I’d be lucky to be able to find it at all, it’s probably so itsy-bitsy—”

“Bitch!” Fortay lunged, and Wyl helpfully stuck his face forward, hoping for a nice, smooth punch right across the cheek. Instead he got fingers around his throat, and the weight of Fortay’s body crashing into his, propelling him to the hard ground.

Wyl gasped and clawed at Fortay’s arms, trying to break his grip, but the guard was far stronger than Wyl. He tried to remember his training but it had been a while since he’d practiced, and was he blacking out? Fuck, blacking out wasn’t part of the plan…when would the five seconds be over? When would…he…

“Alert! Alert!” One bright green zap later and Fortay had been literally blasted off of Wyl’s chest. Wyl tried to inhale but somehow couldn’t, and after another moment he went unconscious.

 

 

Waking up in the infirmary was good. Waking up and not knowing how long he’d been there, that was bad, really fucking bad. Waking up and seeing the doctor standing over him, staring down sourly as he pulled a syringe straight out of Wyl’s throat, that was extra bad.

“Try not to cough,” the doctor advised a second after Wyl started coughing. “You dislocated your hyoid bone. It’s been stabilized and I’ve given you an intramuscular injection of Regen to jumpstart the healing process, but you’re not going to want to speak for another few hours if you can help it.”

“…long?” Wyl managed to wheeze.

The doctor glared at him. “What did I just tell you?”

“How long…here?” Wyl persisted.

“Fifteen minutes. Your husband has been informed, but his duties prevent him from visiting you right now. I’m keeping you under observation until I can relinquish you into his custody.”

Oh shit, Robbie knew. Robbie knew that Wyl had basically had his fucking throat crushed. He was probably spitting iron.

“This unit brought you to me,” the doctor went on, turning his glare on ZeeBee, who stood calmly in one corner of the room. “It has since refused to leave. I informed the techs that it’s malfunctioning, but they say it’s a low priority, so you’re going to have to put up with its company for now.”

Wyl waved a hand to indicate fine, and silently promised himself he’d modify ZeeBee’s code to hide his tampering better. The last thing he wanted was for the robot to be taken away and reprogrammed from scratch.

“Now, I have another patient to see to. What a day,” the doctor muttered. “First a spouse, now a natural; I don’t even have a treatment plan for someone so primitive.”

A natural. Oh, shit, Tamara was here already, and the doctor was going to see her now. The doctor turned and left, and as soon as he was gone, Wyl motioned for ZeeBee, well aware this was all being recorded. Fuck it, he’d deal with it somehow, and in the meantime he’d make this as innocuous as possible.

He reached up to scratch his ear, and came away with the chip in his hand. “ZeeBee,” he whispered, touching the robot on the arm and sticking the chip to it. He patted it once. “Go make Tamara your baby.” It was a fairly complicated command for his bot, since it had never met Tamara before and could only work off of conjecture, but after a moment of perfect stillness apart from its eyestrip pulsing, ZeeBee said, “Accepted,” and left the room.

Wyl sank back into the bed, conscious of the burn in his throat and his creeping fatigue. He’d done his best. It was up to ZeeBee and Tamara now.

 

Redstone Ch. 14, Pt. 2, or I Can't Even

Gah, fuuuuck my inability to handle timing, but I just can’t tackle more plot tonight. Honest to goodness, I spent almost 2 hours skyping with my ficwife trying to work through the plot holes of my contemporary novel, which isn’t even due until February but guess who picked it for her NaNoWriMo story (hint: ME) and has a schedule to keep, FML. And it was super helpful, like talking with her always is, but now I have to tackle a really important part of Redstone and my brain. Just. Won’t.  It can’t even.

 

 

So here. Have a missing scene, aka the porn I was too tired to put in a few weeks ago, since I’m not too tired to handle anything plotty.

I mean, you could complain, but c’mon. Porn. Let me love you.

 

***

 

The bed in their apartment was tiny, barely big enough for the two of them to lie across shoulder to shoulder. They’d spent enough time in ships that they were used to tight quarters though, and Wyl’s predilection for using Robbie as a pillow made things easier. Now, however, Wyl wished it was a little wider, because he wanted to lay Robbie down on it and spread him out across the sheets and stroke his hands over every inch of his husband’s body before finally taking him into his mouth. There definitely wasn’t room for Robbie to spread out, and the sheets were the slick, scratchy kind and the mattress had long since last its elastic qualities, so dispersing his weight wouldn’t make him much more comfortable than he already was.

Still, undressing him was fun, if a little concerning. Robbie had been awake for over seventy hours at this point, not the longest time he’d ever gone without sleep, but certainly harder to handle when he had to be on edge that whole time, always looking over his back and checking to see who might be coming up to stab him in it. And that was when he wasn’t worrying about Wyl, which…no. Just no. Robbie didn’t need to know the details of what was coming. With luck, Wyl would manage the confrontation well enough that he could spend a minute or so in a tank to take care of superficial wounds and come out as good as new. It didn’t have to be a big, scary, dire thing. It didn’t have to worry Robbie any more than he was already worried.

Wyl stroked his hands through Robbie’s graying hair, then down his neck and over his shoulders as he kissed him. Robbie responded to the intent in Wyl’s kiss, the fervency in the press of their bodies, but his touch was gentle, clumsy and a little slow, like he was already half-asleep.

“No, babe, no,” Wyl chided him even as he pushed him back onto the bed. Robbie couldn’t stretch out, but just the act of his head hitting the pillowy part of the mattress seemed blissful to him, if the groan he made was any indication. “No sleeping yet, c’mon.”

“Act now or hold your peace until morning,” Robbie said, the sentence breaking on a yawn in the middle. He might be tired, but he was still hard, and so Wyl dispensed with the foreplay, stripped out of his own clothes in a rush and slid between his husband’s legs. Robbie unconsciously moved to accommodate him, letting him in close without a moment’s thought.

It still fucked with Wyl’s head sometimes, how close he’d come to never knowing Robbie this way. How near he’d come to losing him, not just back when they first met but over and over again, always pulling it out somehow in the eleventh hour. It was humbling, for someone who had come so near ruining his entire life, that Robbie trusted Wyl like this, in close, with everything he had. Wyl wouldn’t let him get hurt. He wouldn’t weigh him down any more than he had to.

“Wyl?” He almost jumped when the back of Robbie’s hand trailed down his cheek. When he looked up Robbie’s expression had gone from soft to serious. “You okay?”

“I’m good,” Wyl said, honestly enough. “I’m fantastic, actually, let me prove it to you.”

“I believe you, you don’t need to—oh, fuck.” Nothing like a well-timed deep throating to give his husband just the distraction he needed.

“Mmm, Wyl, fuck.” And it might be stupid, but Wyl loved that Robbie was a babbler, he loved that he opened up and let go more and more when they had sex. Robbie was so closed off so much of the time, stern, almost severe; it was an intense and private pleasure to see him lose control of himself in their room. If that pleasure happened to belong only to Wyl, so much the better.

Wyl kept his mouth soft on Robbie’s cock, his suction gentle. Robbie smelled like stale sweat, a clear sign he’d been in uniform too long, because those things kept you odor-free for at least sixty hours before you had to clean them. As soon as they were done with this, Wyl was going to book them onto a pleasure cruise and keep Robbie in bed for a week. He would fuck his husband in every configuration he could think of and some he would have to look up, he would take away his senses and gift him with new ones, he would edge him and toy with him and let Robbie possess him completely, and do whatever he wanted to him, but now…right now…this was perfect. Just what they both needed, intimate and quiet and close, Robbie was already so close, his breath hitching as Wyl rubbed the calloused pads of his fingers over Robbie’s perineum, stroking the tender skin and curling his thumb over his sac.

Robbie stiffened, went perfectly still, and finally came in long, slow bursts, like his body was simply too tired to fight that hard against the artificial gravity. Wyl swallowed at lapped at the head of Robbie’s cock for a moment, just enough to make Robbie start to curl from oversensitivity, then pulled off, reaching down to touch himself. He could stroke off fast, it would only take a moment—

“No, c’mere.” Robbie’s hands gripped Wyl’s shoulders, clumsily pulling him up Robbie’s body to lie flat against him, his hard cock pressed to Robbie’s still-slick, softening one. He wrapped his legs around the backs of Wyl’s calves and slowly pushed his hips up. “Like this.”

“Fuck,” Wyl said succinctly, because yeah, okay. This would be quick. He put his forehead down on Robbie’s shoulder and started to thrust, rutting hard and fast into Robbie’s groin, both of them sweaty now but it was fresh and clean, and Robbie moved just enough to give Wyl the friction he needed, just enough to make it easy to come all over his husband, arching his back and gasping despite himself.

“Mmm, babe.” Wyl finally lifted up his head to grin at Robbie, who was—

Passed out. Completely passed out, clinging to Wyl like a fucking barnacle out of long habit but so unconscious Wyl could already see his eyes swimming under their bruised lids.

Wyl sighed. So much for the afterglow. On the other hand, now that Robbie was sacked out and Wyl’s own nervous energy was finally spent, he could dedicate some time to fixing up the device he’d need to get to Tamara. He leaned forward and kissed Robbie gently on the lips. “I’ll just clean us up then,” he murmured, and gently picked his way out of his husband’s embrace, then headed for the bathroom.

 

Redstone Ch. 13, Pt. 2

Notes: Wyl and Robbie figuring stuff out! Go boys go. I'm trying to NaNo, trying to pack and move, trying to adjust to my new client load--I feel a kinship with our guys lately, what can I say? Anyway, enjoy, and please don't curse me out at the end, it had to be like this! I was too tired to keep writing!

Title: Redstone Chapter 13, Part 2.

 

***

Wyl was feeling…antsy. It was the kind of feeling he got right before he either did something crazy or something athletic, and unfortunately the only person he wanted to be athletic with right now was working another insanely long shift in the prison. Wyl could have gone out, but his tormentors seemed to be ever-present, and despite having ZeeBee with him Wyl wasn’t quite sure he felt safe enough to tempt fate. The chances were too good that one of these guys would make a wrong move and he’d respond badly, and end up getting himself or Robbie, or both of them, thrown into the Pit.

No, going out wasn’t the answer right now, and doing so would have worried Robbie anyway. Wyl felt like his brain was running in circles, though, considering the problems laid on him by Tamara and, therefore, by Garrett and wondering if he was going to be able to deliver. He always delivered, always, but this time he just wasn’t sure how to manage it.

It wasn’t the mechanism for getting into the office, or even cracking into Harrison’s private data files. Wyl was a mechanic at heart but he had the mind of a hacker, always upgrading his work with the latest and greatest electronics. He had figured out how to make a pocket-sized warp machine, for fuck’s sake. If he could bend space-time to his will, there was no way a little thing like a locking mechanism was stopping his device. (So what if the thing he’d sent through his little warp machine had never come back out, the point was that he’d done it.) He’d already put something together that cracked the coded entrance to his own room, and on the cryptographic interface he’d been fiddling with for his next personal hovercycle. No problems.

No, there were two problems. One was the issue of connecting with Tamara. This wasn’t just software, it was hardware, and as small as it was, he still had to find a way to physically hand it off to her. The warden was rigorous about keeping the various parts of his resident populations separate, and try as Wyl might, there were just too many layers of bureaucratic and metallic bullshit to cut through to get to Tamara’s part of the prison. He’d be stopped too easily, unless he figured out a way to take out everyone in a position of oversight and control, which was the next problem.

How did he clear the way for Tamara? It wasn’t enough to give her a device that would get her access; he had to make it so she could use it without being found out. There were no computer ports in this part of the facility with that kind of reach, and the best bet for erasing all signs of her coming and going—namely, Harrison’s computer—was exactly the place she had to get to unseen before being able to wipe all signs of herself. It was a classic chicken and egg scenario, and in this case neither of them was going to be coming first anytime soon.

“Okay, fine.” One problem at a time. Wyl got up and began pacing. It wasn’t riding a hovercycle at five hundred kilometers an hour, or making love to Robbie until he thought his bones were going to dissolve, but it was something to do with himself. “First issue: how do I meet up with Tamara. ZeeBee, ask me that question?”

“How do you meet up with Tamara?”

“It can’t be due to a blackout. Even if I could figure out how to take out all of the observers in this place, human and machine, I need to save that for her to use later. Once is an accident, twice is sabotage. Ask again.”

“How do you meet up with Tamara?”

Wyl rubbed his hands together as he thought about it, callouses catching on each other. “We need a reason to be in the same place. Somewhere we’re both allowed to be. Where in the prison can we both be? Ask me.”

“Where in the prison can you both be?”

“Well…the prisoner part of the prison. I guess. But that’s a bad choice.” Wyl shook his head. “The Pit’s out of the question. Ask again.”

“Where in the prison can you both be?”

“Hmm…emergency escapes routes, in case the prison has to be evacuated?” Wyl considered it, then huffed dejectedly. “But that’ll cause a panic and increase surveillance, not decrease it. Ask again.”

“Where in the prison can you both be?”

“Other emergency services…like…the infirmary.” Oh, yes. It suddenly clicked in Wyl’s head, and he grinned fiercely. “That’s it. We need to be in the infirmary at the same time. Small place like this, it probably has a central room we can interact in, or at the very least I can stow something for her there to pick up later. We need to be in the infirmary. I’m going to have to fake an injury.” He grimaced. “Or get a real injury. Fuck.” Well, maybe he could hurt himself with one of his tools. Only he needed it all to be above board, not the sort of thing that Warden Harrison could use as an excuse to come into their room and go through their belongings for. The last thing Wyl needed was that man finding the incredibly illegal equipment he’d smuggled in here. “Robbie’s not going to be happy.”

“Why won’t I be happy?”

“Holy shit!” Wyl whirled around and gaped at his husband. “How the fuck did you get in here so quietly?”

“You were talking to yourself,” Robbie pointed out with a little smile. He looked tired, the lines around his eyes and next to his mouth deeper than Wyl was used to seeing. The gray in his short hair that usually looked so distinguished seemed to make him look older now, uncomfortably so, and he moved like a man who felt every long year of his life. “You never pay much attention to anything else when you’re in the middle of a monologue.”

“I wasn’t monologuing, I was talking to ZeeBee,” Wyl said. “And you won’t be happy because,” and he didn’t want to bring the real reason up right now and see Robbie’s fatigue deepen, so instead, “I’m going crazy trying to figure out how to get Tamara into Harrison’s office without being seen, or heard, or interfered with in any way either before or after. I can give her the tools to wipe herself from the system once she’s in, but getting there in the first place?” He grimaced. “For all I know, Harrison sleeps at his fucking desk.”

“He might, he always seems to be around,” Robbie said absently. “He’s the reason I’m off early, actually, something about me having poor vital signs. I’m fine,” Robbie added when Wyl’s fingers twitched toward him, “just tired. But you’ve got a point.”

“I know.” Wyl ran a hand through his dark hair, frustrated with himself. “I don’t like Tamara being the one to do this, but if things go to hell she’s got a better chance of weathering it than I would if I were the one caught. Not to mention she doesn’t want me babying her. But I can’t figure out how to get past this hurdle, and if I can’t do it…” He shrugged helplessly.

Robbie sat down on their tiny couch and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “We need it not to matter if Harrison sleeps at his desk,” he murmured. “We need it not to matter if someone’s in the observation room. We need to immobilize people where they stand.”

“Yeah, and if you’ve got a way of doing that then you’re smarter than I am, because I’ve been thinking about this for hours and I still have no fucking clue.”

“The gas. The gas that’s used on the prisoners.” Robbie picked his head up and smirked at Wyl. “We need to make it so the gas can circulate through the rest of the prison. The ventilation system can be controlled via the infirmary, from what I understand.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake… “You just figured that out? Right now?”

“Don’t feel too bad,” Robbie said, only slightly smug. “The guards talk about the gas system a lot. They really like getting to set it off. It leads to a lot of very creative betting, apparently.”

“Do you actually think we could get the gas into the rest of Redstone?”

Robbie shrugged. “This rock constantly recycles its air. They scrub it after a gassing, but then they put it right back into the main system again. I’m sure there’s a way to make it so that the scrubbers don’t turn on. We just have to make sure Tamara isn’t affected.”

“You are so smart,” Wyl said to him seriously. “You are smart and sexy and you might have just solved a major problem for all of us and I really want to suck your dick right now.”

Robbie blinked. “I feel like I should say something romantic, but I’m too tired to come up with anything better than ‘okay.’”

“That works for me,” Wyl said, and he dropped down to his knees and crawled over to the couch, only pausing to say, “ZeeBee, discrete mode.”

“Discretion activated.” The green glowstrip went dull and dark, and Wyl focused all his attention on Robbie, settling between his knees and pressing a kiss to the inside of his thigh. “Now…”

Robbie started to laugh. It was tired laughter, but it was genuine. “Oh my god, you’re serious.”

“I never joke about blowjobs.”

“I guess not.” He took Wyl’s hands in his and tugged him up until Wyl was straddled over his waist. “But if we do this here I’m going to fall asleep on the couch instead of our bed, and I don’t want that.”

Was Wyl hearing this right? “You’re…turning down my lips wrapped around your cock?”

Robbie kissed the side of his neck. “Only on the couch, baby. Let’s go to bed, then you can wrap your lips around my cock for as long as you want.”

“So romantic,” Wyl teased right back.

“I learned from the best,” Robbie told him.

Redstone Ch. 13, Pt 1

Notes: More Redstone again! It's funny how plot can suddenly occur to you right when you need it. I've got the next arc put together, so no more diversions for a while (I'm sorry!). Still, I hope you enjoy where this gets taken. Busy day, busy week, busy life right now, but at least I've got this story and you fabulous people. :)

Title: Redstone Chapter 13, Part 1.

*** 

It was the kind of day where Tamara felt like she started things off with bad news and bounced to worse. It began with getting word that she was going to need to finagle a way to break into Harrison’s office and steal information that was undoubtedly heavily encrypted, not to mention dealing with all the other security measures in place, before moving on to a call with the president himself.

“They aren’t allowing me very much access,” Tamara said ruefully, trying to turn President Alexander’s situation to potentially benefit her new mission. “I haven’t had verification of his status for over twenty-four hours, which I know was in your original instructions to the staff. Warden Harrison assures me that the system goes down every now and then and there’s nothing he can do to speed it up, but—”

“It’s better that you don’t insist.” Raymond Alexander’s dark eyes were utterly motionless, gazing out of the holoscreen like tiny, sentient black holes. “The Warden knows how to run his facility. Once the monitoring system is active again, you can reinitiate updates.”

“But the Senate’s special council said that twenty-four hour updates were the absolute minimum that we should be documenting, and I don’t want a lapse in protocol to come back and hurt you if it’s investigated.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that, Tamara.” President Alexander smiled. “I’m sure I’ll survive any investigation, under the circumstances. Just do your best.” He cut the communication and Tamara gave in to the urge to bare her teeth at the screen. Of fucking course he would survive any investigation, because he’d pin the blame for the lapse in oversight squarely on her. Poor little natural, they’re really practically children, it was so kind of him to give her a chance but really he should have known better than to pass that sort of responsibility on to someone so obviously damaged.

“You goddamn son of a bitch,” Tamara muttered. She did some mental math and evaluated the bits and pieces she had on hand that might enable her to do the sort of breaking and entering that she now needed to do. Her stocks came up abysmally low. Not enough stored energy to zap a control panel, not enough hardware to manually get through the system, not enough shielding to block herself from oversight. Not, no, nope, nuh-uh. “Well, shit.”

Admiral Liang had been the one to pass the assignment to her, but Tamara knew the originator of the idea had been Garrett. It was risky, sending out multiple high-energy transmissions per day, but she needed more information, and fast. She put a new number into her cadged-together transmitter and sent it out into space. “Answer,” she muttered as she chewed on a fingernail. It was a habit she’d never quite been able to kick, and one that made her father perennially roll his eyes at her. “Answer…c’mon now…”

“Talk to me, Hummingbird.”

Tamara sighed in relief. There was no fighting some instincts, it seemed, including flashing back to her teenage years and Garrett being the only person she could stand while she was trying to come to grips with her new life on Pandora. Just hearing his voice made her shoulders relax a bit. “You know, you’re asking a hell of a lot here.”

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think you could do it.”

“Oh really?” Tamara being happy to talk to Garrett didn’t preclude her bitching him out. “And how am I supposed to do it given my current resources, which don’t include anywhere near the amount of hardware I need to get into a closed system inside a closed room in a part of the building that I’m only ever allowed into with an escort? An escort, by the way, that there’s absolutely no chance of me being able to take out. I am not that kind of fighter and I don’t want to give anyone here any ideas about throwing me into the Pit alongside the rest of those poor fuckers.”

“You can’t repurpose pieces from a bot to help you handle the mechanics?”

“I don’t have access to bots, they’re not allowed in the guest suites,” Tamara snapped. “And even if I did, I’m not Wyl! I’ve got the basics of mechanical repurposing down, but I’m not an expert. Why can’t Wyl do the break-in?”

“Because he’s isolated away from that part of the prison and is being watched more carefully.”

“Yeah, well, without his help I’m not sure what I’m going to be able to do here. Especially not fast.”

There was a moment’s pause. “You can get in touch with Wyl though, right?”

“As long as he’s equipped to detect the code as well as transmit it, yes.” Tamara had been force-fed Morse during her stay at the Academy, and was relieved that she hadn’t had to learn on the fly to be part of this operation.

“If you can get in touch with him and let him know what you need, then he can build it.”

“Great.” Except for the obvious problem left over. “And I then pick it up how? He can’t come to me, and I’m not allowed to go to him. I’m not even allowed into the medical facilities without a dozen people surrounding me.”

“You’re going to have to find a way to connect, Hummingbird. And quickly.” Another pause, a quick shuffle and then— “I have to go, I’ve got a committee meeting in two minutes. Talk to Wyl.”

The transmission ended. Tamara took a moment to lean over and bang her head into her pillow to muffle a brief scream of frustration. “Make it happen,” she muttered snidely as she took apart the comm unit and reconfigured it to send out a Morse signal. “Figure out a miracle already, get your shit together, do the impossible. Fuck you, I’ll figure it out and then I’ll rub it in your face, mister. In your stupid, pretty face.”

The light on the new communicator flicked on. Tamara put it down on the floor, made sure things were set to receive as well, then tapped her first message.

Hello from a little bird.

She wasn’t directly connected to the structure of the prison, so she wasn’t entirely sure her message would get through. It should, and it should still be the sort of thing that, if picked up by Redstone’s communications grid, was dismissed as extraneous noise, but she didn’t want to count on it. The shorter her transmissions, the better.

Less than a minute later, she got a message back. Of course she did, Wyl was on top of things. Tamara nodded along as she translated. Hello little bird. How’s the nest?

Secure so far. Too secure, maybe. Need to see other nest, no equipment, no way in.

There was a long pause. Big nest?

Ahh, no. Tamara was brave where it counted, but she wasn’t Robbie. There was no way she was going into the black heart of Redstone unless she was forced there. Small, but important. Help?

Could. Maybe. Me/R in? Prob no. Eyes, ears, hands on us. Frowny face.

Oh for fuck’s sake, he’d Morse-coded an emoticon. It was so…twenty-first century of him. Tamara smiled despite herself.

Me in. Work on way, but need equip for B&E. Help?

Maybe. Call again tomorrow. Same time.

Well, it was better than Tamara had thought they’d do right off the bat. Good. Thanks.

Owe me so much espresso. Real beans not fake.

A kilo of real coffee beans could cost as much as a top of the line communication unit these days. Tamara would charge it to Garrett. Only the best.

Good. No more messages came in the nest minute, and Tamara took the communicator apart once again.

Well. Now she just had to figure out how to find a way to meet with Wyl in person and get whatever he managed to make for her, then how to sneak herself into the Warden’s office and tap into his personal computer system. All without being seen. Because of course she did. No problem. None whatsoever.

“Keep telling yourself that,” she whispered as she got off her bed and headed for the shower. She felt strung out and sweaty now; hot water wouldn’t wash away her worries, but at least it would take care of the smell.

***

The funny thing about habits learned in early childhood, as far as Demarcos was concerned, was that you never really outgrew them. The Towers of Bayt were enormous, Frankenstein creations birthed from the skeletons of the colony ships. Because of the vital ship structures colonists had been able to access as they built, the bones of the buildings, those massive, awkward edifices, were made not of durable plasticene meta-materials that resisted impact and vibration and had a dozen other safety features built in. They were metal: old, hard metal that itself had been recycled out of the ruins of Kuala Lumpur’s greatest skyscrapers. On a planet where keeping up your technology was hard, especially in the beginning thanks to the dust storms, communication between different sections of the buildings happened along those metal bones. They were beaten out in a variant of Morse code, in fact.

Demarcos kept his communicator wide open when he was alone in his quarters, monitoring as many frequencies as he possibly could inside Redstone. He didn’t expect to get access to the internal coms between Redstone workers, but occasional bits and pieces of code from the medical unit came in unshielded. It was the one part of the prison that had to be able to connect with everyone who worked there apart from Harrison’s comm, and so had the broadest reach.

He hadn’t been looking for anything other than that. The faint lines of fuzz that floated across his screen were, at first, taken as spatial interference. Nothing important, nothing vital. Except…

Demarcos blinked and looked at the lines again. Was that a…dash? Not an actual dash, but appearing in a rhythm that seemed familiar. And then a dot, a dot, and another…what the fuck?

He launched himself away from his desk and hunched over the comm unit, tracking the interference and trying to make sense of it. Was that a…it was a word.

Good.

The fuzz vanished after that, no more to be seen even though he held his breath waiting for it. Demarcos finally exhaled, but he didn’t relax. That was genuine code, ancient code, which meant that someone here was passing notes that they didn’t want the powers that be to know about. Demarcos wasn’t sure what that meant, but he knew one thing.

He was going to find out.

Redstone Ch. 12, Pt. 2

Notes: A little information from a lot of different people. Starting to bring it all together, at last:)

*so much running around today, OMG. Sorry for the delay in posting*

Title: Redstone Chapter 12, Part 2.

***

“We have to go bigger.”

Stephen resisted the impulse to rub his fingers in the aching space between his eyes. It was a common urge when he dealt with Garrett. “Define ‘bigger.’”

“We won’t be able to use Kyle as a prybar to open up Redstone. It’s going to have to be the other way around if we’re going to get any sort of buy-in from the rest of the senate.”

“And why is that?”

“Because there’s absolutely no way in hell that Raymond Alexander is going to let anyone have any sort of access to Kyle before it’s too late. The charges he’s facing are too harsh.”

“He was always going to face charges of mental and emotional manipulation—”

“This is worse than that.” Garrett’s tone was iced over with bitterness. “This is genetic manipulation on a fundamental level. This is the sort of thing that hardline humanists might turn into a stick to beat not just the president, but Kyle with. Five hundred years ago people like him were burned alive on some planets when the revelation of their modifications came out, and we can’t afford to stick that kind of stigma on Kyle. He’s already being portrayed as other, and we need him to be seen as us.”

It was a bad day when Stephen couldn’t immediately think of a way to improve upon Garrett’s plans. He was, unfortunately, completely correct. There was a simmering undercurrent of xenophobia within the Federation that was being stoked by President Alexander and his cronies, and the revelation that some of Kyle’s most fundamental genetic code had been swapped out as a child could get him dubbed a revenant.

It was an ancient term for someone who had returned from death. Early in the search for gene therapies’ frontiers, large scale gene swapping had been an imprecise science that resulted in many people losing their personalities, their mental capacity and even their ability to move without prompting.

“What do you propose?” Stephen asked at last.

“A good, old fashioned exposé. My people can arrange for recordings to be made and Hummingbird can get them to you.”

“How would you publicize it? No one in the Senate cares if prisoners are being mistreated.”

Garrett smiled grimly. “We’re going to show them a lot more than that. In fact, I need to talk to Hummingbird personally about her ability with a lock pick.”

Oh, wonderful. It wasn’t that Stephen didn’t have faith in his peoples’ abilities, but he worried. So many centuries of life, so much loss and death and privation, and he still had the capacity for something as simple as worry. Perhaps there was something to be said for losing all his memories every time he went into the Regen tank; it kept him from becoming irretrievably jaded. “I see.” He steepled his fingers underneath his chin and thought for a moment. “We’re going to have to adhere to the original timeline, though. We can’t afford to leave Kyle and Magpie in there any longer than we absolutely must.”

“I know. Not to mention the shit that’s going down with Robbie and Wyl.”

Stephen frowned. “What are you referring to?”

Garrett shrugged. “Oh, just your average, everyday sexual harassment with a side of death threats. They’ll probably be all right, but it’s not safe for them either.”

Stephen sighed. “It’s not safe for anyone, it seems.”

Garrett nodded grimly. “You have no idea how right you are.”

“What does that mean?”

“Let’s just say…that Berengaria has a good reason to isolate herself, and suggested that similar measures might be a good idea for my family.”

“Your father is used to being in the line of fire. He’s taken appropriate precautions for himself and his family.”

“I’m not sure what appropriate consists of anymore,” Garrett mused. “I think even my own Death Star might not be enough at this point.” He shook his head and moved on before Stephen could ask him what a Death Star was. “Anyway, I’ll get the changes underway on my end if you do the same on yours. I think we’ll have to make sure our people are talking, so that’ll be on Hummingbird to initiate. You’ve got the security upgrades for Cody ready to go?”

“Of course.”

“Good.” That was enough to ease some of the tension from Garrett’s face. “He and his friends are looking forward to coming back.”

“I’ll meet them and Grennson’s parents at the port myself.”

“Thank you.” He closed the comm feed and Stephen took a moment to sit back and let the new information find its way into the tapestry of his mind, new threads brightening here and there as others dimmed. The overall picture was changing shape, more of a chimera now than ever before. Positively controlling for all the variables was going to be next to impossible.

He would work on rethreading some of the bigger issues later. Right now, he needed to talk to Hummingbird.

***

Wyl sat back with a satisfied sigh and inspected the glory that was his robot. In less than two days he had taken ZeeBee from an underperforming guard ‘bot to the complex protective machine that it was right now. It had been two days of mostly not sleeping and very little eating, but given that Robbie had been going non-stop since he got here thanks to “shift enhancement” by management, which was another way of saying hazing, Wyl hadn’t been neglecting him.

The best thing about ZeeBee’s modifications was that they were completely inert unless it was Wyl or Robbie giving the commands. And the commands themselves were non-standard, so no one would be the wiser if Wyl had anything to say about it.

Wyl took a sip of espresso and cleared his throat. “ZeeBee, show me your pretty eyes.” The green glowstrip brightened for a moment, indicating that the mini recording device Wyl had installed there was active. “Five second recap, project.”

“Command accepted.” A hologram of the previous five seconds of recording appeared two feet in front of Wyl, showing himself lounging back in his chair and swiveling side to side a bit.

“Well done, delete and reset.”

“Command accepted.”

Now to test his more exciting new functionalities. Wyl grinned and put his cup down. “ZeeBee, show me your pretty hands!”

ZeeBee’s arms lifted into the air, and a slot hidden in the side of each of them popped open. The right one extended a micro-laser, a spare battery and a knife that looked like an old-school scalpel. The left one had a single-use Regen injector, a tourniquet and a painkiller.

“Well done, reset.”

“Command accepted.” The tools secreted themselves away again, and the robot lowered its arms.

“ZeeBee, show me your dance moves!”

The robot’s head began to spin in a circle. “Alert, alert! Sound the alarm!” A piercing yowl began to radiate from the robot’s speaker.

“Well done, reset!” The sound stopped abruptly.

“Command accepted.”

“Good.” Now for a more nuanced directive. “ZeeBee, show me your baby.”

The robot rolled forward to Wyl’s chair, lowered its arms and gently lifted Wyl out of his seat. It cradled him close to his chest and said, “There there. There there. There there. There the—”

“Well done, reset.”

“Command accepted.” ZeeBee promptly dropped Wyl to the ground.

“Ow.” Okay, so that one would take a little fine-tuning. Wyl picked himself up and brushed off the seat of his pants. “ZeeBee, listen to the birds.” Not that Wyl expected this one to amount to anything, but just in case Isidore developed a way to get a Morse signal through the prison walls to him.

Surprisingly, ZeeBee started to click in a recognizable pattern. “Oh, shit,” Wyl muttered. That couldn’t be good. He wondered how long Isidore had been trying to get in touch. “ZeeBee, translate.”

“Check your messages, damn it. Hummingbird. Check your messages, damn it. Hummingbird. Check your messages, damn it. Hummingbird. Check—”

“Well done, stop.”

“Command accepted.”

Hummingbird? They weren’t supposed to be talking to her yet. Wyl opened his tab and checked his encrypted feed, tapping in passwords he barely remembered setting up. There wasn’t just a message, there was a vid link. An active one. He opened the channel. “Hummingbird?”

“There you are! Where have you been, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for hours?”

“I put my room on a communication lockdown while I was…tinkering.” Only Robbie’s comm would get through the shield Wyl had put up to minimize distractions. “What’s going on?”

“You haven’t spoken to Garrett yet?” Wyl shook his head. Hummingbird—and damn it, pseudonyms were all well and good but that just sounded too weird in his head, Tamara—irritably blew a lock of blonde hair off of her forehead. “Great, then I get to be the one to pass things along. I’m going to need to do some breaking and entering, and I haven’t brought along everything I need for that.”

“Breaking and entering? Here?” Wyl knew he was gaping but it was hard to stop. “How the hell are you supposed to manage that? Who’s important enough to—oh, shit, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Nope.”

“You can’t get into the Warden’s office without setting off a ton of alarms, if it’s anything like Caravan was.”

“Well, I need to figure it out, and fast. We need information in his private computer.”

Of course they did. Because nothing could ever go as planned. “Soon?”

“The sooner the better. I don’t suppose there’s any way you can get out of the spouses’ quarters and lend a hand?”

With so many eyes on him every time he stepped out of his and Robbie’s door? “I doubt it.”

“Then you’ll have to help me figure out how to do it myself.”

Oh, boy. “That’s going to be difficult.”

Tamara laughed. “You’re telling me. It’s got to be done, though.”

“Well, then.” Wyl sat back. “Tell me what you’ve figured out so far.”