Code of Conduct (31 page)

She lay on her back. She couldn't move. Efforts to flex her legs caused her right thigh to cramp. A tight strap pressed around her ribs just beneath her breasts, barely allowing her to breathe. A band like bony fingers encircled her right wrist and presumably her left, as well.

Jani opened her right eye and felt the depressingly familiar release of tension as her film split. She blinked. A slimy hydropolymer fragment slid off her eyeball and down her cheek, leaving a cold, damp snail track in its wake.

Well, let's see how much more damage we can do
. She opened both eyes wide. Her left film remained intact, but her right continued to fissure. Her vision alternately blurred and sharpened as bits and pieces floated across her eye, then over the side, leaving her right cheek cool and sticky.

After a few determined blinks, Jani's vision cleared enough that she could look around. Up to a point.
Nice ceiling
. Dull white, from what she could tell, since the room's lighting left something to be desired. She lifted her head as high as she could. Darker walls, somewhere in the cheery blue family. In the far corner, near the door, two frame chairs squatted near a low, dispo-littered table. Someone had eaten their meal out of a box. More than one someone, judging from the number of containers.

They ate and watched me sleep
? Jani tried to swallow and coughed as her dry throat prickled. Her mouth felt lined with absorbent, her lips, dry and rough. She summoned up what saliva she could and ran her tongue over her teeth. She pulled
against her restraints again; her lower back tightened. She sagged back on the bed and tried to gather her scattering thoughts.

Not just any room. I'm in a hospital
. Jani could tell from the smells in the air. Chemical. Antiseptic. Freshly cleaned bed linens and an underlying hint of metal. Especially metal. Instruments. Cold, sharp, and always too large.

This is for your own good, Captain
.

Jani shivered at the memory of her examinations, embedded in flesh and bone and brought to life by her surroundings. John had gotten to the point where he flinched each time she did, which only made things worse. Val Parini, meanwhile, always examined her with the distracted air of one who had seen the worst, and rest assured, Jani, you aren't even close.

But that bastard DeVries had enjoyed hurting her. At first, she thought herself the unlucky recipient of his warped version of foreplay. But as time went on, she was compelled to conclude the man simply did not like her.

Hell, he hated my guts. He felt I distracted John from their greater purpose
. She had heard the arguments. Raised voices in the hall outside her room.

“Open your little rat eyes, John! The A-G wants her, so hand her over. Hang on to her, she'll drag us and everything we've worked for right into the sewer with her. We've learned what we needed from her—give her up!”

Jani stroked the bedsheet. Warm, where her hand had rested. Smooth. Pure white. Like John. He never lost his temper during DeVries's tirades. He'd slip into her room afterward, pull a chair beside her bed, and watch her as she pretended to sleep. Always the same position, legs crossed at the knees, hands folded in his lap. The attitude of a man who owned the store and the street besides.

Hello, creation—my name is John Shroud
, he'd said to her the first time she'd opened her eyes to find him there.
Unfortunate name for a physician, don't you think
? His milk white skin had seemed to glow in the harsh light, his voice rumbling from a source nowhere near his heart. Palest blue eyes had glittered like cut crystal. In the stupor following the reversal of her induced coma, Jani had thought him some sort of implacable, medically trained angel.

It was the color of his eyes that did it—turned out they were fake
. John's eyes were pink, in reality. He'd been the one who taught her how to film. And how to walk, dress, and feed herself with the aid of numb, twitchy animandroid limbs.
Being a freak has its drawbacks
, he'd told her.
But it has its advantages, as well. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about
.

But he'd never shown her how to burst a restraint. Bad John. Jani pulled against the straps until the pain brought tears to her eyes. Then she raised her head and looked at herself.
I was wearing clothes, wasn't I
? If she had, they'd since been replaced by a plain-fronted white gown. In the crook of her right arm, a raised silver disc glittered in the dim light.

Oh hell
—!

Too late. Cued by her increased movement and elevated blood pressure, the sedative pump activated. Jani felt the skin beneath the disc tingle. A heartbeat later, warmth rippled up her arm and across her chest.
I don't want to sleep anymore, damn it
! She yanked again at her restraints, but the straps held fast.

Sweat bloomed on her forehead, under her arms. Chills. Her stomach spasmed. Burning rose in her throat.
I'm going to vomit
! She tried to turn on her side, but the chest strap held her down.
I'll drown in it
! She forced herself still, breathed in slowly and deeply, willed the nausea to pass. Acid harshness percolated to the base of her tongue and stayed there.
For now
. If she continued moving, the pump would administer another dose after a buffer period had passed. Could be thirty minutes, or thirty seconds, depending on the drug.

Jani looked toward the door. Funny no one had checked on her. The sensors in the bed had to be monitoring her vitals. Didn't anyone notice the increased activity?

She worked her hands. The skin on her right wrist burned as she moved.
I'm hurting myself—these shouldn't hurt
. What kind of restraints were these?
Old
. And poorly applied.
I'm not in a place where they're used to strapping people down
. That seemed promising. Maybe they wouldn't know how to handle her if she broke loose.

She pulled against her left wrist restraint. Gently and firmly at first, then not so gently and much more firmly. All she felt
was the compression. When her hand became stuck, she tugged harder still. A few muffled cracks sounded. It worked through the narrow opening more easily after that.

Jani held up the hand for inspection. The little finger twitched uselessly, corkscrew-twisted wrong side up. The thumb's movement was barely perceptible. The whole hand had numbed—she couldn't even detect pressure anymore. She loosened the strap beneath her breasts.
Thumbs come in handy when you're trying to work buckles
, she thought as she tried to unlatch the strap she couldn't see using fingers she couldn't feel.

“How's it goin' there, Captain?”

Jani glanced to the side. Borgie sat perched on her end table, cradling his T-40 like a bouquet of long-stemmed roses. “You could help,” she replied.

Smoke puffed from the man's flak jacket as he shrugged. “Can't, ma'am. You know that.” The fact seemed to desolate him—his hangdog expression appeared even more gloomy than usual. “Yolan's here, too,” he said, momentarily brightening. “She's found a new friend.”

The chest strap fell away. Jani sat up and freed her right wrist and ankles. “Are they out in the hall, Sergeant? Does that mean you know where we are?” She looked again at Borgie, whose smile faded.

“Can't help you, ma'am,” he repeated. “You know that.” As Jani struggled out of bed, he stood up and shouldered the T-40. An odd odor wafted about him as he moved. Not scorched gloves, this time, but something familiar that Jani couldn't quite place. Scorched, yes, but not gloves…

“Oh, great!” She felt for the back of the knee-length gown and caught a handful of bare ass. “I had clothes, didn't I? Where the hell are they!” She caught Borgie's eye just as he was about to shrug another negative. His shoulders sagged.

“—
bullshit
—!” The sound pierced through the closed door. Jani backpedaled toward the bed, prepared to dive under the sheet if anyone entered, but no one came. Instead, the voices grew louder.

“—see you in hell before I call him in! Once you call in a facility chief, forget it!” A man's voice. Enraged. “—empty bedpans for the rest of my life—!” Jani tasted the
panic, as well. Like bile. The taste reminded her of the pump. She worked her index finger beneath the thin disc—it left a raised, bloody welt in the crook of her arm. The itch had taken on a squirmy life of its own, as though worms crawled through her elbow and up her arm.

“You have no choice,
Doctor
!” Another man's voice. No panic, but you could fuel transports with the anger. “Look at the liver enzymes! When did you ever see values like those!”

The doctor countered, voice lower, shaky. “Are you sure you calibrated the blood analyzer properly?”

Silence. Which spoke volumes. “I ran the drug screen,” the angry man finally replied. “She'd been dosed with Ascertane sometime in the past seventy-two hours. Her blood contains metabolite NCH-12. The last bulletin we got stated that if any patient turned up positive for that metabolite, we were to notify the nearest facility chief immediately. Now, Doctor, are you going to call Cal Montoya, or am I?”

The doctor spoke, his voice softer, words impossible to discern. Jani left Borgie standing by the door and walked back to her bed. Near the headboard, a wheeled IV rack stood like a skeletal sentry. She hefted it, checked it for balance, swung it back and forth like a baseball bat.

“Heavy, Captain?” Borgie had started poking through the dispos on the low table, wrinkling his nose at what he found.

“Nope. Under control, Sergeant.” Holding the rack in her right hand, Jani headed for the door. It swept open for her, revealing a larger room, an examination table, lab furniture, and assorted analyzers. The doctor and his angry colleague leaned over a desk, their backs to her, still arguing. The desktop was cluttered with readout cards, sheets of notes, and stacks of textbooks.

The angry man turned. Jani recognized him. Vaguely.
The duty nurse
? His eyes widened. He reached out to her just as she swung the rack around.

Both men wore medwhites. Jani stripped off the doctor's. Fewer bloodstains. She put them on, then scrounged through the glass-fronted cabinets, uncovering bottles of film former, a white medcoat, scuffed white work shoes. She washed away blood, dressed, refilmed her eyes. Light brown filming. Poor
coverage. The greenness shown through—her eyes appeared phosphorescent in the office lighting.

“You look like a crazy wonko, Captain,” Borgie said dryly as they left the infirmary. “Get the urge to drop 'em and bend over just looking at ya.”

“Control yourself, Sergeant.” Jani tried to smile, but one look at Borgie's face stopped her. It had changed in the past few minutes. Blackened in places. Blistered in others. One ear was gone. The peculiar odor that followed the man like a faithful hound had grown stronger. “Am I dying, Borgie?” she asked. “Or am I just cracking up?”

Her sergeant, her dead sergeant, stared at her through cloudy eyes. Cloudier eyes. His dark brown irises grew milkier as he spoke. “Captain, I can't help you. It's all you.” His voice rasped with desperation. “
Your
questions!
Your
answers!”

They paused so Jani could get a drink of water from the hall cooler. After the fifth dispoful, Borgie began to fidget, so Jani reluctantly tossed the cup in the 'zap and fell in behind him. The people they passed in the halls looked at Jani's clothing, never at her. No one challenged them, or tried to stop them.
I mean, me. No one's tried to stop me
. Her sergeant had nothing to worry about. He possessed his own unique brand of camou.

Good ol' Borgie
, Jani thought as she watched the man's smoking back. “
Sais-tu ou nous allons
, Sergent Burgoyne?” she asked him.
Do you know where we are going
?

“
Mais oui, ma Capitaine
.” Borgie looked back at her as he spoke. His other ear, along with most of his cheek, had burned away. White and yellow blisters glistened in the light.

The acid rose once more in Jani's throat. She recognized the smell now.

Borgie led her through an anteroom and into an office. Expensive paintings. View of a lake. Nighttime. Moon reflecting on rippling water. Jani expected to see a man sitting at the desk, but instead, she saw a woman. A friend. Dead, of course, like Borgie. Funny how that fact seemed to concern her less and less.

“Yolan.” Jani approached the desk slowly. Her old corporal still wore her usual startled-deer expression. Her lazored
blonde hair was as neatly combed as ever. Her steel blues appeared battered, though. But it was brick dust, not smoke, which puffed from the material as Yolan nodded weakly. The rubble had buried her fairly deep, after all. Oddly enough, her gamine face had remained untouched, but her body…

Bones in a bag
. All that had been left. Borgie had waited for Jani to turn her back before he fell to his knees and gathered that limp body in his arms. Yes, his relationship with Yolan had crossed every line. Yes, Jani had known, and kept it to herself. The one time she got involved was when Borgie asked her to persuade Neumann not to leave Yolan behind at Rauta Shèràa Base. Neumann hadn't wanted to take her to Knevçet Shèràa. He trusted her even less than he had Jani. “I killed her, Captain,” Borgie had cried. His weeping had seemed to sound from the walls themselves, following Jani as she left that section of the bombed wing, dogging her down every hall, echoing around every corner.

I helped, Sergeant
.

“We had to come here,” Yolan explained to Borgie, who loomed over her in his still-futile effort to appear domineering. “She got scared out in the open. Didn't want to risk seeing him again until she knew she could take it.” Her delicate features set in stern lines, Yolan turned to Jani. “Captain or not, you say anything mean to her and I swear, I'll air you out. She's been through enough.” The corporal leaned her head back. The chair rocked back as well. It dawned on Jani that Yolan had yet to move from the neck down.