“Found it,” Skipper said, trying to sound casual. “Looks pretty normal. How’s it work?”
“There’s a set of instructions on the side. You can read, right?”
Skipper winced before she could hide it. “Of course I can read.”
The man on the ground watched her carefully. “Okay, so you already know it gives you instructions on how to reprogram the AI on the side. Basically, someone already authorized to shoot it has to log in and verbally sign over his credentials to you, then you have thirty seconds to show your face to the camera, put your hands on the A and B port sensors while verbally speaking into the receiver at the C port your name and age, set a new password, then give the nanotech a taste of your blood and a piece of your hair. Then the gun will be attuned to your biometrics.”
None of that made a damn bit of sense to Skipper. At the mention of blood, however, she stiffened. She’d heard of the horrible spells Changers could weave with blood.
“It’s a protection measure,” the man said, correctly gauging her response. “It’s so scavvers don’t get their hands on it, or if they do, they don’t know what they have.”
“Is that why it looks so normal?” Skipper demanded, feeling stupid. She wondered how many of these weapons she’d unknowingly picked up before, and many of them she had written off as ‘just a shotgun’ or ‘just a rifle’.
“They’ll even shoot regular bullets,” he agreed. “The engineers thought it would make it less likely for scavvers to try to reverse-engineer the main tech if it already appeared to be a fully functioning rifle.”
Skipper glanced at the gun beside her, still wrapped in the man’s bloody shirt and leaning against the rock.
“Can you see the instructions?” the Changer asked gently. “You got the ports figured out?”
She couldn’t, and didn’t, but he didn’t need to know that.
“There weren’t pictures,” she muttered.
The man almost seemed relieved, like he’d been tense, thinking she were about to blow them both up. “Oh, well, I mean we are trained to use them from birth, so we really don’t need diagrams. Besides, don’t wanna give scavvers too many ideas on how they work.”
Skipper looked the weapon over, then grimaced and shoved it aside. The man watched her gesture, looking up at her nervously. “You don’t want to learn?” There was distinct anxiety in his words.
“I do. Just not now. I’m tired. Been chasing that damned dog for a week.” In truth, she wanted sunlight to get a better look at the weapon to try to piece together how it worked before making a fool out of herself, but he didn’t need to know that. She looked him over, wondering just how dangerous it would be to stay under the ledge for the night, fifteen feet from a live Changer, rather than go off looking for somewhere more secure.
He quickly averted his gaze, eying the dead man flopped against him, giving her time to think. He didn’t appear to be interested in trying to kill her in her sleep, but Skipper knew from experience that didn’t mean anything. He was, however, bound hand and foot and looked like he’d probably spend more time limping than walking, should he get his hands free. Skipper glanced at the blood-covered pack. She was exhausted. She’d expended way more energy than she’d wanted to, and just the thought of digging rations out of the dead man’s pack was making her dizzy with hunger.
Twenty years of instinct told her she needed to find some place thirty minutes down the wash, where he couldn’t find her in the dark. A week of not eating properly, however, had reduced her to near mental-incoherence at the idea of trekking another half an hour at night…only to walk back in the morning.
Skipper glanced up and decided the overhang was deep enough to shield her camp from view overhead, so she unbuckled the pack, found the rations, and ate a quarter of one food bar. Then, tucking the rest away before her body—already screaming for more—betrayed her and she shoved the rest of the bar into her mouth, she went about making a small fire, digging out a ridge of sand to block the light from the rest of the canyon. Later, once her hunger pangs had quelled, she broke off a tiny piece of jerky from the airtight bag and stuck it between her teeth to suck on it while she worked.
The man knew better than to ask for some food. He watched her come and go as she collected dried cactus husks and dead mesquite from the wash, glowing eyes silently following her in the darkness like twin golden moons.
I hate their eyes, Skipper thought, fighting the impulse to shout at him to stop watching her. She knew it would betray her nervousness, and the last thing she wanted to do was sound nervous. Fucking creepy eyes.
“Say something, Changer,” she muttered. “I hate silent, sneaky fucks like you. You keep being so quiet, I’m gonna think you’re plotting something and just kill you.”
He made a nervous laugh and cleared his throat. “I’ve never been that sneaky. My mom always told me I held a secret like a cactus held a weasel. Everybody calls me—”
“Don’t care. You try to make me like you, I’ll just kill you faster.”
He went quiet.
“But talk. Tell me a story or something. You Changers have stories?”
“I did a lot of stupid shit as a kid, if that’s what you’re talking about.”
“Sure,” she said, arranging the tinder. “Let’s hear it. My Changer entertainment for the night.” She gestured broadly at him. “Usually it’s screaming as I carve on them a little before I kill them, but I’m tired and I guess some idiot Changer telling me some dumbass story about his life as a psychopath works just as good.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Again, he looked like she’d stricken him, hesitating as to what to say.
“Oh just spit it out,” she groaned, rolling her eyes as she piled bigger sticks over the tinder. “I’m gonna kill you either way. At least this way, you get to say something interesting before you die.”
He looked up and met her gaze, and it was creepy and unafraid, just—thoughtful. “Okay,” he said. “How about I tell you the story of how I ended up on my ass in the bottom of a canyon?”
“Sure,” she said around the piece of jerky she’d been sucking on. “Sounds entertaining.” She used a zapstick to get the fire going—something all the Changers carried around to light their cigarettes, but worked well enough on tinder and other brush if it was small enough—and, once flames had started setting into the wood, she carefully brought the gun out and set it in front of her. She saw some markings on the side, but couldn’t distinguish what they meant.
“A few days ago, I graduated basic and command shipped me out of Hope to take up a support position in the desert branch. We were told—”
He hesitated at her snort. “Hope,” Skipper muttered. “There’s a joke for ya.”
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “I figured that out pretty quick.”
She waved him on.
“So, uh, I’d just got done with training, got dumped in the desert with a temp unit, for ‘experience’. My commander assigned me to back up a team, didn’t really say what they expected of me, eight other guys, all vets, all pretty badass—you could tell they’ve been at it awhile…”
He trailed off when he saw the dark look she was giving him. Flushing in the dim firelight, he said, “I mean, they were savvy in the desert. They knew where to go, what to wear, what to do. I was just lost and did what I was told. They threatened to leave me out there a few times and write my commander and tell him I had an accident, then all laughed like it was the funniest thing, and I kinda realized they’d done that before.”
Skipper grunted and shoved another stick into the fire.
“So my squad took me out in the desert. Nine of us. There was a village east of here, real hard to find. Crammed in amongst some rocks. They said they’d found it a few months ago, but wanted to let them bring in everything before winter. I had no idea what that meant.”
Skipper, whose face had twisted with bitterness, scowled into the coals as she said, “It meant they wanted to let them harvest their crops before they killed them all.”
He cleared his throat. “So, uh, they piled us all on two hummers and went out to the village. I thought they should’ve brought more vehicles—you know, to bring people back—but they said it wouldn’t be necessary.”
Skipper’s hand was gripping the dried twig so hard it cracked. “So you killed them.”
“Well, uh, yeah. Not the villagers, though. They did that.”
Skipper jerked and squinted at him, not sure if she’d heard correctly.
He cleared his throat. “So, uh, I had no idea what they were doing out here in the desert. I don’t think they tell us on purpose. I mean, they got to the village and the first thing I saw, the guy on the gun just took aim at some woman with a baby on her hip and popped her. She hadn’t even noticed us yet. She exploded on the rocks, just pieces of her. Then, when the guy on his right complained he killed a girl, he just laughed and said, ‘We don’t need the ugly ones.’ I guess I figured out right then that we weren’t ‘liberating’ those places, like we’d been taught.”
“So you joined in,” Skipper said, in a cold whisper.
His face twisted and he recoiled. “No.”
She snorted, not believing him.
“They wanted me to help, but I wouldn’t. I tried to get the guy away from the fifty-cal—I still thought we were on a humanitarian mission—and my sergeant slammed the butt of his rifle into the side of my head. Real hard, right in the face, five or six times. I fell back into the truck and don’t remember too much of what happened next, except that my ears were ringing and my nose was bleeding all over the seat.”
Skipper squinted up at him, but said nothing.
“I kinda passed out, I think. I woke up later, back in camp. My Pastet saw me and laughed, said I was lucky I was useful or they would’ve left me out there like the others…” He cleared his throat. “Then I saw the people they’d brought back with them, the ones they were ‘rescuing’ to send to Hope. Women. Not a single man or a child. All of them pretty. No one over forty.”
“They don’t send them to Hope,” Skipper sneered.
“Oh, I figured that out when they killed the first one when she wouldn’t fuck the lieutenant,” he muttered. “She bit him, took off part of his lip. He just walked her over to in front of the fire so everyone could see, shoved her to her knees in the middle of the captives, and cut her throat open so she bled all over them.”
Skipper said nothing, scowling at the purple patch.
The Changer looked uncomfortable. “So…I…uh…left.”
“You sure you didn’t fuck a few scavver girls before you wandered off?” Skipper sneered.
“No. I set them all free.”
She squinted at him again. “Valiant of you,” Skipper finally muttered.
He shrugged. “Pastet got away. That was my big mistake. Dude knows—” he hesitated, glancing at the corpse leaning against his leg, “…knew the desert. Tracked me down. I was hungry and disoriented from the concussion, so he got the drop on me. Got my hands and feet tied up. Spent a few minutes kicking my ass. Said he was gonna tell command I died with all the others in the raid after he pissed on my corpse and buried me in the desert.”
“Hold on,” Skipper snapped. “Are you telling me you killed seven other Changers, minus that guy with the raven tattoo?”
The man’s unnatural eyes flickered back to her and he nodded.
She didn’t believe it. “Because they murdered some scavver woman?”
“Because they were going to turn me into one of them.”
She squinted at him. “How’d you kill them?” she demanded finally. “Some new recruit with a concussion against eight other guys? Why aren’t you dead?”
The man wistfully glanced at the weapon leaning against the rock behind her. “They let me carry the big guns.”
“Uh-huh. What’s the patch mean? I’ve only seen it a few times, and you’re the only one I’ve ever got to talk to before I killed. I know it’s important. There’s only ever one at a time, and the other guys all seem to be guarding him.”
He flinched. “Erm. It’s a…specialist…designation.”
“Specialist in what?” she demanded. “The weapon?”
“Yeah, you could say that. Or sometimes other things. Look, my shoulder hurts, can I at least move a little bit?”
“No. You realize I know where that camp is, right?” Skipper demanded. “I can check you’re telling the truth.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, gingerly easing himself sideways against the wall of stone, prying his arms this way and that. “They’d caught you on camera a couple times, were planning on placing mines in case you came back.”
“Stop moving,” Skipper commanded.
“I’m pretty sure my shoulder’s dislocated.”
“Don’t care.”
He hesitated, then slumped back against the rock with a resigned sigh. “I think technically we’re on the same side now,” he muttered.
She laughed. “No. Never.”
“I really did kill them,” the Changer said, looking a little confused.
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “But who knows why that guy was really trying to kill you. Not my problem. Either way, you’re a Changer. Born and bred. Just look at your goddamn hair. You’re probably as close to pure as they get.”
He winced, but said nothing.
“Changers are all better off dead.”
Instead of arguing, he nodded slowly. “A month ago, reading comics back in my air conditioned barracks in Hope, I would’ve disagreed with you, but after what I saw last week, you’re probably right.” He tilted his head back against the rock, staring up at the starry sky. He was silent long enough that Skipper opened her mouth to threaten him again, but before she could get the words out, she heard him snore.
She spent a few minutes watching him, then set out her own bedroll and crawled under a blanket facing where he slept out under the starlight, her body between him and the weapon, her right hand resting on the grip of her hunting knife, and fell asleep.