The Nexus Series: Books 1-3 (14 page)

“On my
mask?  Like, a design?”

“Yes.  You
get whatever decals or images you want on your mask.  Bradley Park has the
emblems from the Korean flag, not surprisingly.  Corey Stone has a skull
painted across his.  How typically male and unimaginative, am I right?”

“What if I have
no idea what I want?”

“Let me know
later.  It’ll be plain black until then.  Okay, you’re done.”

She waved Jill
back into the waiting area.  A minute later, Amber’s measurements were
done.

“Your uniforms
will be arriving in a few days,” said Miss White.  “Sorry, it takes rather
a long time to manufacture the polysynthetic
exoskeletal
protectant at such precise specifications.”

Jill
frowned.  “The poly-
whaty
?”

“The material
used for the armor on the uniforms.  State-of-the-art stuff.  Light,
flexible, bulletproof for all but the closest and most direct shots.”

Amber raised her
hand.  “Stupid question:  Do we get shot at much?”

“Occasionally,”
Holiday answered.  “If it’s any comfort, the department is yet to suffer a
fatality—or even serious injury.”

“Another stupid
question,” said Jill.  “Can we shoot back?”

The director gave
a half-smile.  “Follow me.”

THE
Nexus
happened to have the nicest indoor shooting range on Anterra.  They
watched from behind a glass partition as a couple of field agents peppered
paper targets with holes.

“To answer your
question, Jillian,” said Holiday, “yes, you’re allowed to shoot back. 
You’re even allowed to shoot first, if you must do so to prevent your enemy
from harming you.  Our field agents carry weapons at all times.  Of
course, our prayer is that they will never need to use them.”

“Just try not to
aim for anything vital,” said Corey.  “Our firearms are defensive, not
preemptive.”

“In other words,
be like the cowboys in the old movies and shoot the gun out of the other guy’s
hand,” said Amber.

“If possible,”
said Holiday.

The two shooters
left the range, and Holiday led them through the partition.  “Later this
week you’ll be taking a basic weapons’ safety course.  I realize some of
us,” he eyed Jill, “are used to handling weapons.  But please follow this
department regulation with the finest of attitudes.”

“Will do,” said
Jill.

“After the
course,” Holiday went on, “your hours spent here, as well as your accuracy
during each visit, will be logged.  We’ll be keeping our eyes on your
marksmanship.”

Amber gazed
nervously at the range.

“Ever been shooting
before?” Corey asked her.

“Once or twice
with my dad.  I’m better at kicking.”

“Speaking of
which,” said Holiday, “Amber, here, will highly approve of our next stop on the
tour.”

THEY
went down some stairs to a large workout center—weights, exercise machines, and
aerobic mats.  A track circled the place.  Several department members
were using the gym.  Energetic music blared from unseen speakers.

“You will be
expected to keep in prime physical condition,” Holiday announced.  “Each
of you will be assigned a personal trainer who will regularly check up on your
strength, endurance, and flexibility.”

The director led
the way past the weight training area into a large, open room with a padded
floor.  “Welcome to The Ring,” a sign over the doorway said.

A Korean teenager
and an old, impossibly skinny man were in the center of the room.  They
were fighting.  At least, the skinny man was fighting.  The kid
seemed to mostly be falling down in various painful ways.

Holiday gestured
to him and said, “Meet Bradley Park.”

Bradley didn’t
manage much of a smile as he pushed himself onto his feet.

“And this is
Bear,” the director added, indicating the old man.

Bear smiled
widely.  “Jillian Branch,” he said in an airy voice, “and Amber Phoenix,
is it?  I bask gratefully in your radiance!”

Jill couldn’t
place the accent.  Whatever it was, Bear sounded regal.

“Bear is
Bradley’s personal trainer,” said Holiday.  “And, starting now, he will be
both of yours as well.”

“Such lovely
young ladies,” Bear said with a slight bow.  “Can two such beauties truly
belong in the realm of combat?”  He wheezed a laugh.  “I will tell
you a secret:  It has been my experience that the more attractive a young
lady is, the greater is her propensity for violence!”  He laughed
again.  It seemed like he meant it as a compliment.

“In that case,”
said Holiday, “they ought to be quite the matchup.”

Jill smiled
ruefully. 
In that case,
she thought,
Amber’s going to kick my
butt
.

16

JILL
was more right than she knew.

They’d hardly
swallowed breakfast the next morning before they were into their workout attire
and off to the training area.  Bear squawked at them to come into The Ring
first thing.

They didn’t bout
against each other, for which Jill was incredibly thankful.  Bear started
by leading them through a very long and elaborate series of stretches. 
Then he gave what he called his “preliminary examination.”  The way this
worked was pretty simple:  Bear asked Jill to stand in front of him, and
said, “So...how would you fight me?”

Jill had been in
a fight or three in her day.  You didn’t have much of a career as an
errander without exchanging fists with someone at some point.  But it had
always seemed pretty simple to her:  Hit the other person; don’t let the
other person hit you; get out of there if possible.  Now Bear wanted to
examine every minute detail.  Most of this examination consisted of him
grasping his sparse white hairs and moaning about how she’d loose a kicking
match with a one-legged old woman.  He seemed to want to correct her every
move and posture.

When it was
Amber’s turn, Bear’s crooked teeth suddenly appeared.  He never seemed to
stop smiling while she demonstrated her abilities.  Like everything else
about her, her moves were graceful and flawless.

Big surprise, Jill
thought.  So when were Bear and Corey going to fight for Amber’s heart?

THINGS
were a little different in the shooting range.

If possible,
Amber seemed to know less about guns than Jill did about hand-to-hand
combat.  Jill had
show
her how to hold the
weapon, how to load it, how to squeeze the trigger instead of jerk it. 
She even had to remind her to click the safety off.  “Better than
reminding you to turn it on,” she said reassuringly.

“Hey, I got it, I
got it!” said Amber the first time she put a mark on the paper target.

“Nice going,”
said Jill.  “He won’t be able to run with a gimpy left foot, that’s for
sure.  Now, let’s go for more of the heart or head area, shall we?”

“Cowboy movies,
remember?” said Amber.  “Nothing vital.”

“Right.  The
hand, then.  Or the neck.  That’s where you’d ideally want to put a
stunner.”

Amber emptied
another clip without much accuracy, and sighed.  “If we’re ever in a
shootout, I’m a goner.”

“I’ll do the
shooting,” said Jill.  “When I shoot the guns out of their hands,
cowboy-style, you can take over, kung-
fu
-style, and
save
my
rear.”

“Deal,” said
Amber.

Funny how people
didn’t seem so bad in situations where you were just plain better than they
were.

THEY
were evenly matched in the gym.  They pushed each other at a steady pace
around the track and at the exercise machines.

By the time they
showered and went to the
caf
for a late lunch they
were exhausted.  It was a nice, satisfying kind of exhaustion.

WHEN
Holiday had first introduced them to Bradley Park, Bradley had given Jill a
strange look.  It may not have meant much to the casual observer. 
But to Jill, it was easy to interpret.  He saw her Korean roots. 
More precisely, he saw she came from a
partly
Korean background. 
Most wouldn’t have been able to tell.  Other than her dark hair and eyes,
she didn’t have particularly Korean features.

But Bradley could
tell.  And he didn’t like it at all.

Not many
“purebloods” lived on Anterra.  Intermarriage between ethnic backgrounds
was hardly uncommon.  Anterra was a nation unto itself, and in general
Anterrans married other Anterrans regardless of racial or national background.

It was a
different story with the Koreans.

It hadn’t been
their fault, really.  Korea had joined the United Space Programs late,
when the Metropolitan Satellite project was already in full swing.  This
caused the other nations in the USP to look down on the few Korean scientists
and engineers involved, and to make light of their contributions.

The prejudice
continued onto the satellite once it was settled.  Of the nearly one
million original citizens, most had been from the United States, Japan, or the
European Union.  Only about 20,000 had been Koreans—a number that was
still “way too high,” according to many.  The Koreans responded by banding
together.  Of their own will they became the most segregated group on
Anterra, and expressed a national pride unlike any other on the satellite.

And Koreans on
Anterra simply
did not
intermarry with/have children with
non-Koreans—not without going against a very strong grain, anyway.

Jill obviously
represented an exception.

“Was it your
father or your mother?” Bradley Park asked her when they were in line at the
caf
that evening.

Jill hadn’t even
seen him approach.  He hadn’t greeted her.  This was apparently his
way of starting a conversation.

“What do you
mean?” she asked.  She knew very well what he meant, but she wasn’t going
to play along.

“Your mother, I
would guess,” he said, ignoring her question.

How had he gotten
it right?  “My mother was Korean, if that’s what you’re talking about.”

“So was
mine.  And so was my father.”  He gave her that same look—a look of
superiority, a look of disdain, a look of pity, almost, that she didn’t have
the pedigree that he had.

“It looks like you
chose excellent parents,” Jill said blandly.  “I didn’t get to choose
mine, actually.  They were already together by the time I came along.”

He sniffed at
her, mostly because he didn’t know how to respond.  “Well,” he said after
a moment, “I guess we’re on the same team, now.”

“Were we ever
not?”

He sputtered
again.  “I just mean we’d better find a way to get along.”

“Were you
thinking it would be difficult for some reason?”

He clenched his
teeth.  “You know what you are, and what I am.  We can’t just ignore
our differences.  We have to face them.”

“I freely admit
our differences:  I can’t choose to stop being half-Korean, whereas you
can
choose to stop being an arrogant jerk about it.”

“What’s up?”
asked Corey Stone.  He’d come over from his table when he saw their
conversation heating up.  He was giving Bradley a look that could freeze a
polar bear.

“Just meeting the
new girl,” Bradley said in a flat tone of voice, then walked away.

Corey looked at
Jill questioningly.

“He’s a little
proud of his heritage, isn’t he?” Jill asked.

“Cut him some
slack,” said Corey.  “He doesn’t have much else to be proud of.”

Jill chuckled.

It wasn’t until
Corey was walking away that it hit her:  Corey had come to her
defense.  That was a good sign, right?  She tried to tell herself it
was nothing, that he was just getting after Bradley because he didn’t like
Bradley much.  Still, it gave her a good feeling.

A little of that
good feeling actually stuck with her when she noticed Corey was now sitting
next to Amber.

A
third hard day of training was rewarded with a night out on the town.  As
Jill rode the elevator up toward the ground level of GoCom, she realized this
would be her first glimpse above the surface of Lake Anterra in almost five
days.

She and Mandy
caught a bus to the Raging Bowl on the south rim.  In a haze of cigarette
smoke they watched Dizzie’s band, the Lawn Flamingos.  Jill didn’t know if
she could call them “good,” but she felt secure calling them “loud.” 
Dizzie never stopped grinning or bouncing up and down while she hacked at her
pink guitar.

While another
band played, Jill bowled against Mandy and Mandy’s boyfriend, Broderick
Sebastian Rawlings, a.k.a.
Rawlie
-boy.  Mandy
was good, as promised.  Jill was even better. 
Rawlie
-boy
licked them both.

“Does professional
bowling pay better than being a lawyer?” Jill asked him.

Broderick
laughed.  “It might be more fulfilling,” he said.

Dizzie joined
them at a table for pizza and sodas.  They laughed and talked about the
concert, about Mandy and Broderick, about bowling...about anything but
work.  Jill even threw in a comment or two, though she mostly just sat and
listened.  She wondered if this was something along the lines of how
normal people lived.

Then she
remembered she was a special agent for a secret government department.

AFTER
dinner on Jill’s sixth evening at The Nexus, Corey Stone told her and Amber
to follow him.  “There’s another part of our department I’ve got to show
you.”

From the balcony
over HQ they went down a short hallway.

“The garage,” Corey
announced.

Several sleek
black vehicles were parked in the wide cement-floored space—ground cars,
skycars
, motorcycles, and even a few
skybikes
.

Jill did a
double-take of one of the
skybikes
.  “Is
that...?”

“Yours,” Corey
confirmed.  “We brought it down from the ferry docks the day you got
here.”

“So this is where
we head when we go on missions,” Amber said.

Corey
nodded.  “This way to the locker rooms.”

Men’s and women’s
locker rooms off the garage were divided into narrow sections.  Each
section included glass doors with full uniforms propped on stands behind
them.  The full body armor and masks looked like actual agents standing
stone-still behind the glass.

Corey led them
down one branch of the locker room where two new uniforms, external armor gleaming,
were propped behind side-by-side glass doors.

“Yours,” said
Corey.

Jill’s breath
caught in her throat.  She stared at the uniform, and the dark, reflective
surfaces of the mask’s eyes seemed to stare back.  It felt like looking at
a person...the person she was supposed to be.

She wondered if
climbing inside the uniform would help her make the transformation.

“Jill?”

She started,
looked back at Corey.  “Did you say something?”

“I said let’s
head back to the garage.”

“Sorry. 
Coming.”

She glanced over her
shoulder at the uniform one last time as she walked away.

BACK
in the garage Corey told them to climb into one of the black cars.  Jill
gestured for Amber to ride shotgun before Corey could ask her to, which she
figured he would.

They drove away
from HQ via the tunnel under the lake.  The tunnel dead-ended, and Corey
parked and waited.  A platform lowered, and Corey pulled forward onto
it.  Then the platform rose, and they were in the warehouse of Pete’s Fish
Cannery.

They drove out of
the warehouse to the dark streets of the old industrial area east of the lake.

“This part of the
city is abandoned,” said Corey, “like a lot of districts these days.  It
makes an ideal exit and entrance.  It’s the only way to get into or out of
the department besides the elevator from inside GoCom.”

“Won’t anyone get
suspicious seeing vehicles coming and going?” asked Amber.

“We rarely pass
any other drivers on these roads until we’re a fairly good distance away from
the cannery.  Even if someone did happen to suspect, only a department
vehicle can open the garage doors of the cannery or signal the floor panel to
drop into the tunnel.”

“So it doesn’t
matter that we’re being watched?” asked Jill.

“What?” asked
Corey.  Alarm threw off the tour-guide tone of voice he’d been using.

Jill
pointed.  “Someone just ducked behind that brick wall.”

“Are you sure?”

“I saw him too,”
said Amber.

Corey pulled
over.  “We’d better check it out.”

“We’re not
dressed for a mission,” Amber said hesitantly.

“Or armed,” Jill
added.

Corey opened a
console between the front seats.  “We never go anywhere unarmed,” he said,
grabbing a handgun loaded with stunners.  Jill grabbed one too,
reflexively.  Amber finally did as well, slowly, like she was grabbing a
snake and trying not to get bit.

Jill was
alarmingly used to this kind of situation—the kind that included being armed
and dealing with other people that were probably armed too.  “I’ll follow
him,” she said.  “You two double back around that warehouse and try to
spook him back toward me.”

“We shouldn’t
split up,” countered Corey.

“He saw us,” said
Jill, “and he knows we saw him.  Our only advantage is that we outnumber
him.  We’ve got to try to trap him.”

Corey finally
nodded.  He and Amber slipped around the corner.  Jill rounded the
edge of the brick wall at the other end of the warehouse.

She was peering
down a dark alley and smelling the dank puddles in the potholed pavement. 
She heard but didn’t see the guy slinking down it.  There was a slight
breeze off the lake somewhere behind her.  She heard the distant noise of
city traffic, but no sound nearby other than the slinking.

Suddenly she was
an errander again, with that familiar sensation rising inside her.  The
sensation seemed more nameless than ever, more distant, even though it was at
the very core of her being.  She’d felt the same feeling a thousand
times...but it was different this time.  It felt foreign, now, like a
puzzle piece that didn’t fit inside her anymore.

It was hard, but
she pushed away the conflicting emotions and focused on the here-and-now. 
She thought of her new uniform standing uselessly in a glass case back at HQ,
while she stood here with nothing but jeans and a T-shirt...oh, and a gun.