Junkyard Cats - Faith Hunter Page 0,25

disease that had been sucking the life out of him.

And now I’d gotten sloppy and let a human into my space. Jagger was already showing signs of the transition, bending to my will, becoming what I called a thrall. And he didn’t even have the fever yet.

Sloppy. I’d gotten bloody sloppy.

I got out playing cards and checked the Chrono because it felt as if my visitor had been in there a long time, but ten minutes wasn’t long unless I was nervous. Then it felt like forever. The music switched to Frank Sinatra singing “Fly Me to The Moon.” The music was changing again when I heard the PTC hatch open.

I didn’t turn around. I stirred the soup, my toes tapping to Aretha Franklin belting out “Rolling In The Deep.” When I did look over, Jagger was sitting at the dinette, dressed in Pops’ clothes, his eyes on me, a fresh beer in one hand.

“Gomez. Music volume down. Matt,” I said over the office speakers, pushing with my blood slightly, accepting Jagger’s transition, preparing for enough mind-altering to allow him to leave us alive. “Update, please.”

“Twenty-four Puffers accounted for. Jagger’s bike is fine, to this point, Heather. What are you and Jagger having for supper?”

Small talk. Baby steps, using our fake names to overwrite Jagger’s short-term memories with new ones. We chatted about the cats. We mentioned the imaginary boss a few times and his imaginary trip into Charleston, West Virginia, on business. Jagger didn’t take part. I brought the stewpot to the table and ladled chowder into the bowls. Jagger didn’t ask about the name changes. Didn’t seem to notice. He’d touched everything I had touched in the toilette. The beers. The ladle . . . everything.

We’d had a guest once before, the first year I was here, Grant Zuckerman, a nice man who showed an interest in me and who I liked. A lot. He and I got close. Very close. It seemed like an okay thing, since Grant lived in the nearest town, Naoma, and had Internet access and wanted to do business with the scrapyard. Mateo and I had done great with the mind-altering, giving Grant his freedom, keeping him coming back, or so we thought. Unfortunately, Grant wanted more. It had gotten ugly. Mateo had been forced to end him. The bones were out back, buried beneath a pile of rusted-out John Deere tractors, his flesh long since eaten by rats.

Transitioning the cats had been a mistake. I hadn’t known the bastardized nanos could pass from human to another species, but it had gone better once we figured out that Tuffs had become mine, and a queen. The cats didn’t seem to get sick. They just got better, smarter, faster, and had the ability to communicate mind-to-mind.

I brought spoons to the table and sat. We ate, and the fish stew was delicious.

“So. While we wait on Matt to clean out the Puffers,” I said, “tell me why you’re here.”

Jagger frowned.

“You said there was a tracking sensor?”

“On a kutte,” Jagger said, sounding uncertain.

“That’s a biker riding leather. A vest.”

He nodded, the motion jerky. His color was higher than before we ate, his temperature beginning to rise.

“My boss got in a pile of miscellaneous stuff not long ago.” I got up and brought the box of junk to the table. Placed it beside Jagger. “We can dicker—info, updates, and a little cash in return for your sensor—if it’s in here.”

Jagger frowned again, but he went on eating. Several bites later he said, “Good fish stew, considering we’re in the wilds of nowhere desert. What info do you want?” He hadn’t even looked into the box.

I said, “You can tell me what happened to Darson and his friend Buck Harlan.” Darson, the man who had been beating his girlfriend and her daughter—who was now me. Buck Harlan, the man whose body I left burning in the Tesla. Building upon things we had talked about and things I still needed to know. Replacing memories. Binding him to me through a shared chemical, hybrid nanobot signature.

Building my nest, just like the cats did.

Just like the bicolors did.

As we ate, Jagger told me about the Battle of Seattle, and the deaths of Darson, his girlfriend, and her daughter. I corrected his memory and said I, Heather, had gotten away. I made up a few details, enough for his own mind to build upon, unless he looked at it all too closely. We had seconds of the fish stew, finishing all but