“Jesus.”
“I know, right? I cheated, though. Used sub-sonics. It’s pretty amazing what I can do. You should hear my sexy ingénue.”
“No thanks. I can’t remember ever feeling less interested in sex—”
“They’re coming.”
The door clunked and clunked again and gasped open, and in came Natalie’s mother, in her pearl gray, like a monochrome Jackie O, smaller than Natalie remembered, but no older. She took a small step inside, her nose wrinkled at a smell Natalie had lost all awareness of. She stared at Natalie. Cordelia slipped in behind her, round face a china-doll mask. Natalie felt a pang of weird sympathy for her, being with their mother on her own, the sole focus of Mother’s attention.
“Hi, Mom.”
Her mom circled the bed, walking around three sides before coming to the wall, retracing her steps, coming to rest beside Natalie.
“Jacob,” she called. Jacob stepped into the room, looking pained.
“Yes, Frances?”
“Remove these restraints.”
“Mom—” Cordelia began, but her mother held up a shaking hand.
“Jacob. Now.”
They locked eyes. She remembered this from childhood, their wars of silent gazes. As she’d grown, she’d realized these were a game of chicken where each gave the other longer to contemplate the ways retribution could come, until one looked away. As usual, Jacob broke contact first.
“I’ll be back.”
Natalie assumed he’d gone to get the med-tech or whatever he was, but a moment later, he was back with the merc. She nodded a little at Natalie, a degree of acknowledgment that was practically a full-body hug given their previous interactions. Maybe Natalie had impressed her with her “spunk.” Or maybe she’d been given permission – or orders – to lighten up.
“Frances, Cordelia, please stand back.”
Mom looked like she was going to argue, but Cordelia dragged her arm. “Come on, Mom.”
Once they had a few meters’ distance between them and the bed, the merc stepped forward and locked eyes with Natalie.
“No trouble,” she said, and clipped a bracelet around Natalie’s wrist. Natalie lifted her head and strained to see it. It was evil blue metal. She didn’t want to even guess what it did, though she couldn’t stop her subconscious from gaming it out: not shock, because she could grab hold of Mom or Dad or Cordelia and the shock would go through them, too. Maybe something in her nerves, like pain, or seizures, or –
“No trouble,” she agreed. The merc impersonally lifted the sheet, removed her catheter, let it retract into the bed. The sensation made her gasp with humiliation. The merc wiped her hands with a disposable and dropped it into the bed’s hopper before offering her hand. Natalie took it, because after days – weeks? – supine, she was weak and dizzy and her stomach muscles refused to help swing her huge, numb legs over the bed’s edge. Tears sprang into her eyes, because when she’d been a walkaway, she’d been so strong – they all had been. All the walking. Now she couldn’t walk away even if they cleared a path. Tears rolled down her cheek and slipped into her mouth.
She snotted up the rest of the tears and blinked hard, let herself be guided to her feet. She swayed, not looking at Mom or Cordelia, locking eyes with Jacob, letting him see what he’d done to her. He’d destroyed her body, but she made her eyes shine to let him know he hadn’t touched her mind.
Her mom was at her side, getting a shoulder beneath the arm whose hand didn’t have an IV. The merc disconnected the other end of the hose from its bed-feed, capped it with a sterile, elasticated wrap, draped the hose around Natalie’s neck. Her mom smelled of her own perfume, made specially by a man in Istanbul who used to come to the house once a year, during Sacrifice Feast, when he’d tour the world and drop in on his best clients while all of Turkey ground to a halt. Natalie hadn’t smelled that scent – not quite sweet, not quite musky, and with a whiff of something a bit like cardamom – for years, but she remembered it more clearly than her mother’s face.
Her mother gasped when she settled her weight over her shoulders. Natalie thought she was too heavy, then: “Jacob, she’s like a bird!” in tones more horrified than Natalie had ever heard from her. She saw her mother’s perfect skin crumpled in a grimace, eyes narrowed into slits that made the hairline wrinkles at their corners deepen in a way she hated.
“Hi, Mom.”
They stood, swaying. She felt her legs giving out.
“I should sit.”
They both sat. The opening in the mattress where the hoses retracted, smelly and dark, was right behind them. Her mother twisted to look at it, twisted back, and captured Jacob on an even fiercer look.
“Jacob,” she began.
“Later,” he said.
Natalie enjoyed his discomfiture. Cordelia stood halfway between the parents, fretting with her hands, picking her cuticles. She’d been a nail-biter, broken the habit only after several tries, and Natalie could tell that she wanted nothing more than to chow down on her own fingers.
It struck Natalie that she was the least upset among them, except for the merc. She was on a team with the merc, them versus these fucked-up zottas. That was stupid. The merc was not on her side. Come on, Natalie, focus.
“I won’t be tied down again.”
“No, you certainly won’t,” her mother agreed.
“Frances—” her father began.
“No, she won’t.” The staring contest smoldered again. The balance had changed. There was a new implicit threat – what would a divorce court judge say about a daughter tied to a bed, starved and intubated, locked away in a safe-room? Her mother had been furious about her going walkaway, but that wouldn’t stop her from deploying any leverage Jacob Redwater had handed her.
“No she won’t,” he said. “Excuse me.” He stepped out of the room. He shut the door. Clunk-clunk.
Cordelia took a tentative step. Her mother extended an arm and she stepped the rest of the way, let Frances give her one of her hugs, always warm enough, always ending a moment before you expected.
Cordelia subtly leaned to Natalie, testing for the presence of a potential hug, but Natalie didn’t signal back. Fuck her. For that matter, fuck Frances. They had known she was a prisoner and neither had sprung her. Getting her loosed from four-point restraint hardly qualified as liberation.
“Natalie, this is just terrible,” her mother said.
No shit. “Uh huh.”
“Why, Natalie? There are more constructive ways to engage with the world. Why become an animal? A terrorist?”
It was so fucking stupid she couldn’t manage a derisive snort. “What would you prefer?”
“Move out, if it’s so bad. Your trust is mature, you could buy a place anywhere in the world. Get a job, or not. Take up a cause. Something constructive, Natalie. Something that won’t get you killed or raped or—”
“Kidnapped by mercenaries and tied to a bed in some rich asshole’s basement?”
Her mother set her jaw.
“Natalie,” Cordelia said. “Can I get you anything?”
“A lawyer. Cops.”
“Natalie—” Cordelia looked hurt. Natalie didn’t let herself give a shit.
“You knew I was down here. You knew he had me snatched. You don’t like the walkaways and you don’t like that I’m one, fine. But in case you haven’t noticed, I’m an adult and whether I become a walkaway is none of your business. Neither of you get a say in what I do.”