The Changeling Game, Chapter 82

82.
The Misnaming of the Rose

In a way, Kyra reflected ruefully, she was lucky. For a certain value of “lucky” that still equaled “fucked.”

Before the shuttle even reached Lupus Station A, the mystery of the fire in the overhead compartment had been “solved:” a tearful, apologetic boy had admitted to everyone—to his parents’ horror and his older brother’s fury—that he’d squirreled away half a dozen packs of Marlboros inside his carry-on and hidden within his toy box for his brother, along with just as many functional, old-fashioned isobutane lighters with flint-and-sparkwheel igniters. The spaceport security staff had missed all of it in their cursory examination of his bag.

Maybe, Kyra thought, that was why the fire had burned so hot and fast, starting in her own bag and spreading to the kid’s… and then going wild when it encountered the lighters. Everything in the compartment had been charred to the point where there was no sign that the fire hadn’t started in the boy’s bag. By the time they docked, everybody seemed to have a theory of how the lighters had managed to spontaneously ignite. But nobody was even glancing at the last passenger to board. Although “Mallory Glynn” was taken aside for a moment by spaceport staff during debarking, it was only so they could offer her a thousand-UD bearer card in compensation for the loss of her property and ask her if she wanted to file a claim for a larger amount.

She’d lost roughly ten thousand UDs worth of bearer cards and belongings to the fire, but she shrugged, accepted the card, and told them that it should cover the damages. She needed to get the hell off the station before General Toal’s goons took a closer look at the accident or the passenger manifest.

Since the new bearer card, conveniently, had no possible ties to Kali Montgomery, she used it to buy her ticket to New Queensland. She didn’t bother purchasing any replacement clothes or toiletries; she’d be in cryo within a matter of hours. Replacements would be cheaper once she was on an actual planet again. While she waited for the Komodo Dundee to begin boarding, she worked at programming her new comm with every bit of data she could dredge from memory. She was pleased with herself when she managed to recall the ID and password for the Merc Network account Tizzy had created for her, which would allow her to see who was hunting her, how much her bounty was, and where people thought she was hiding. But she couldn’t recall the ID and password for the message drop.

Fuck. If she could remember that one, she’d be able to reach out to Tizzy for help reconstituting the rest. Her little sister had all of the data backed up in her brain and could rattle any of it off from memory at a moment’s notice…

We never should have split up, she admitted to herself. She should have especially realized it was the wrong thing to do when Toal had embraced the separation. Divide and conquer… what if she’s been calling for my help this whole time?

She was almost relieved to climb back into cryo and get away from her thoughts.

Six more months in cryo meant countless more repetitions of her dreams, which had taken a darker, sadder tinge somehow. While she still caught a glimpse of Tizzy in the mirror of a settlement house on the crash planet, she knew that her sister had been lost to her, taken from her. The Jack that had been Tizzy was dead.

She was weak… she couldn’t cut it…

And, her conscience screamed when the cryo sedatives didn’t prevent it, it was her fault that Jack was dead. She hadn’t been vigilant enough, had allowed them to be separated.

Which meant that the Jack that was part of her… was dead too?

It felt true.

By the time she woke on New Queensland, having landed at the New Brisbane Interplanetary Spaceport, the narrative had solidified around the idea that Tizzy had died sometime during the adventures they and Riddick had gone on, at the hands of either Imam Abu al-Walid or General Toal, their shared “Jack” identity dying with her… because Riddick had left them and Kyra hadn’t been strong enough to protect her little sister—she was weak, she couldn’t cut it—on her own.

When she really stopped and thought about it, the narrative made absolutely no sense. But trying to think about it awakened elaborate knots of anxiety and guilt. It was easier to move on, move forward, not look back.

New Queensland was a semi-rustic world, with places where “Mallory” could find work she liked, work that suited her temperament. She spent half a year as a ranch hand, working with cattle, riding horses, feeling free and hopeful, before an incident with a handsy supervisor got her fired. Things got harder after that, and nobody seemed willing to give her a shot anymore. There was mining work to be had, but she had no guild membership and no way to afford the requisite shine job without an income stream already in place.

Twenty menthol Kools my ass, she inwardly grumbled when she found out how much the procedure would cost her. She could pay for it, but it would dip too deep into her reserves, her “bug-out money.” If she didn’t find work soon, though, she’d have to pull from that fund anyway just to survive.

Once a week, she did a routine check of her record on the Merc Network. By coincidence, the first thing she saw during her next sign-on was a want ad, put up by some crew out of Lupus Five.

The bounty for Kyra Wittier-Collins was “pending updates.” She had no idea what the hell that meant.

Her next stop was her employment application account, which had one new message.

Dear Ms. Glynn,

Thank you for your interest in our job listing. We regret that we are unable to offer you a position at this time. We will keep your application on file in case any new positions open up.

P.S. You should remove the New Gold Coast Cattle Ranch from your employment history on future applications. They’re saying really nasty things about you to anyone who calls them to verify your job record. I’ve talked to some other women who used to work there so I know what probably really happened, but the head of HR still had to remove you from consideration because of what they said. I’m really sorry! —Jeni.

Fuck. Fuck.

A day later, after kicking the shit out of several gym punching bags and two would-be muggers, Kyra came to her decision. Opening the Merc Network back up, she found the want ad and followed its application link. It wasn’t ideal, but it was work, and it wasn’t like she didn’t know how to outwit mercs if she needed to. She and Tizzy had demolished an entire platoon of them once.

The application was easy enough; they were looking for new recruits, promising to teach them the trade and offering a good cut even during the apprenticeship. Aside from the basics, she didn’t have to provide a whole lot of information besides education and existing skills. Like Kali Montgomery before her, Mallory Glynn had allegedly attended a military academy; she could simply claim that she’d been traveling for a while before looking for work after graduation and not put down any employers, least of all the New Gold Coast Cattle Fuckers.

But… even if Mallory Glynn’s reputation with employers hadn’t been poisoned, the military academy angle was an issue. She no longer had the backup documents to prove that she’d attended one, and she’d lost all of her notes about exactly which fictive names to put down as references… not to mention access to those references’ messaging accounts to reply to inquiries. Could she really even use that name anymore? Was it any less toxic than trying to use Kyra Wittier-Collins or Kali Montgomery? Maybe it was time to use a new name on applications, starting with that one.

It was a moment of recklessness, a “why the hell not?” that would prove all too costly. She no longer had the ability to create a new identity, but there was one more name that she had a claim to that, she thought in that moment, had far less poison attached to it. She felt a twinge of worry, a hint of foreboding, as she put it on the application instead of Mallory Glynn:

Jack B. Badd

She almost didn’t hit send, almost pulled back and put the Mallory Glynn name back on it. But she took a deep breath, told herself not to wuss out, and submitted the application.

A few hours later, the crew responded, offering a meeting and interview in New Brisbane. She picked an interview time a few days out and got her ass back to the capital city barely in time to make it.

The man who interviewed her was some employment agency guy fielding candidates for the mercs; there was little more to glean from his thoughts than she already knew. He asked her standard questions, had her spar against a local martial artist who was there to evaluate each recruit, and then—after a short comm call—informed her that she met all of the crew’s qualifications. He gave her a contract to sign—several pages long, but he flipped right to the signature page without stopping—and then drove her to the mercs’ vessel at the spaceport.

She’d barely stepped onto the boarding ramp before they had her in cuffs.

The next week, spent in one of their miniscule holding cells, was wracked with both anxiety and fury, and a lot of self-recriminations as she realized what they were doing and why. Jack B. Badd was a known associate of Richard B. Riddick; how the fuck had she overlooked that angle? Her conviction that Jack was dead, and that somehow the whole ’verse should know that, made no sense suddenly. Why the hell had she thought it would work to use a dead girl’s name? Why the hell had she thought anyone else knew Jack was dead?

And how the fuck had she forgotten all about Alexander motherfucking Toombs?

He walked into the room, alone—no sign of Eve Logan, anyway—and frowned at her.

“Who the fuck is this?” he demanded of the mercs. “This ain’t Jack B. Badd.”

“It’s the name she put on her application,” one of the mercs objected. “You sure she’s not the girl?”

“Goddamn sure.” Toombs walked closer, studying her carefully. “But you give Eve Logan a call. This might be the girl she was looking for, last time I saw her. Kyra Somethin’.”

Kyra Somethin’ restrained a groan, struggling to keep her expression deadpan and challenging. I really fucked myself. Every name at her disposal was poisoned, but at least “Mallory Glynn” didn’t have anyone hunting her. She should’ve stuck with “Mallory Glynn.”

Eve Logan, as it turned out, wasn’t interested.

“Apparently,” the leader of the mercs told her with a smirk, “Kyra Wittier-Collins—if that even is you, ’cause your ID says Mallory Glynn and my checks say it’s one hundred percent legit—she ain’t a fugitive anymore. She’s been exonerated. Those pissfucks at Amnesty Interplanetary got all the charges against her dropped or vacated. Ain’t no money in turning you in anywhere, even if you were her. You ain’t even got an outstanding parking ticket, Mallory. So the question is… what do we do with you now?”

They’d already filled up their crew, every berth on the ship except their bounty cages taken, and had only offered her an interview so they could capture Jack B. Badd for Toombs.

Why the fuck had Toombs said Jack was someone else? She’d recognized him; why hadn’t he recognized her?

Another of the merc team laughed, the sound humorless and cruel. “The contract she signed gives us a lot of leeway, you know. Who cares what name’s on it? She signed it, we have video of her signing it… it’s valid even if she never did read what she was signing. Paragraph fifteen says we can subcontract her services to whoever we want.”

There was no escaping the cell. New Queensland, on Elsewhere’s side of the threshold, was an airless rock. The vacuum would kill her before she could drop down to the ground and isomorph back. She toyed with trying to isomorph the whole goddamn ship over to Elsewhere and then come back alone, but the biggest thing she’d ever moved across a threshold was a piece of driftwood. Tizzy had always done the heavy lifting, and she’d fallen into a coma for several hours the time she’d moved a ship that size.

Kyra was stuck. And, very likely, fucked.

A day later, four men arrived at the ship and looked her over.

“Not bad,” one of them said, smirking.

“I like some more tit on a girl, myself,” another grumbled.

Their minds were full of filth. For the first time since she’d been tossed into the cell, Kyra felt real terror.

“Well, you already got you a girl picked out anyway,” the third said. He studied her with a nasty smile. “She’s got her some spirit. Gonna have fun breakin’ her in. We’ll take her.”

It took five of the mercs to get the chains on her. She fought the whole time, costing two of them teeth in the process, but probably would have lost a lot sooner if they weren’t under strict instructions not to “damage the merchandise.” Finally they had her immobilized and loaded into another vehicle, which trundled her over to another launchpad. She’d barely been hauled onto the next ship before the man who’d talked about breaking her appeared, a vile grin on his face, and—

Riddick sprawled backward onto the floor, scrambling off of the dais, heart hammering.

Fuck! Fuck!

His mind had recoiled so powerfully from Kyra’s ordeal that it had completely broken the connection with the Quasi-Dead.

Are you all right, Lord Marshal? they asked.

“Fuck no,” he growled. Suddenly he found himself almost agreeing with the Moribund’s barely-veiled desire to wipe out all of humankind in retribution for—

He forced himself to calm down, to take deep, long breaths. He’d suffered through countless tortures, himself, when he’d been even younger than Kyra was in her memories, before he’d cut his tracker out and gone on the lam… but he’d never been abused that way and couldn’t bring himself to experience it with her. His mind shuddered away from reconnecting with the Quasi-Dead.

“Those men who bought her contract,” he growled after a moment. “Those mercs, too… any of them converts?”

No, the Quasi-Dead told him. None of them are among the ranks, nor have any of them been in the past. They are all unknown to us.

Damn. He would have liked to make one of them live through what she had, over and over and over again until the fucker’s mind collapsed under the weight of the horror she’d experienced.

“What about that motherfuckin’ rancher?”

He is unknown to us as well.

Fucking hell.

Why do you wish to punish someone for a crime not committed against you? the Moribund asked.

“Why are you still destroying worlds after four hundred years?” he countered, trying to center himself.

You know what will happen if I stop.

“Yeah,” Riddick conceded, letting out a gust of air. “I do. Gonna try to find a way to fix that for you.”

You cannot. That is not your role in this. My brothers and sisters believe that is her role. I still doubt. Humans too are weak and treacherous to have so much faith in one of them.

Her? For a moment, with Kyra in the forefront of his mind, he thought that was who the Moribund meant. But no, the rogue Apeiros was speaking of Jack. Jack… who could never, ever know what her sister had been put through after their separation.

“So what is my role in the war against your Demons of the Darkness, exactly?” Riddick stopped and shook his head. “No, never mind. Don’t tell me. All this destiny bullshit… just tell me this. Are you just avenging yourself here? Not your brothers and sisters? One of the first things you said to Jack was something about ‘a trillion deaths’ for every one taken from you.”

He could recall the exact wording if he wanted to stop and think about it, but right now he didn’t want to delve into his own thoughts. Or anyone else’s.

No. I am not just avenging myself.

“There’s your answer, then. Maybe I feel the same way where Kyra’s concerned. Those fuckers helped drive her to her death.”

I understand now.

He needed to recover, get some distance, before he tried to continue, although he was going to have to ask the Quasi-Dead to skip forward when he did.

“How much time’s elapsed since I came in here?” he asked them.

Two hours, they replied.

Fuck. He hadn’t even gotten all that far into her memories, even. She’d spent thirteen months in cryo and roughly another eight months out; the date on her merc contract had indicated that she’d signed the document in mid-February, 2519 and been slaved out before the month ended. Still roughly two and a half years until he’d found her in Crematoria, still roughly two and a half years before his attempt to rescue her got her abducted, converted, and killed.

He still needed to deal with the rest of the converts he wanted to take back… but he needed, more than anything, to spend some time with Jack. She, at least, had managed to survive knowing him without being destroyed. The impulse to stay far away from her before he managed to change that was back, strong as fuck, but…

I need her. More than ever.

He closed his eyes, reaching for some of her memories to counter the horror he’d just faced. Jack in a bar while on a weekend ski trip with her roommate, legally an adult but still too young to drink… fine with avoiding the issue by ordering an iced tea while Janice worked at “getting sloshed” at the other end of the bar… speaking to a man whose surface appearance was not dissimilar to his and inviting him to go skiing with her… later, after the skiing, being invited back to his cabin to warm up…

She’d had a number of creative ways to warm up, and no reservations about employing them. And while most of her had been firmly in the moment, a tiny part of her had imagined that it was her reunion with him…

He could feel himself calming as he explored her memories, paying attention to the ways she liked to be touched and held, the positions she preferred, the places on her body that could ignite her senses. Aside from occasional moments of discomfort and annoyance if one of her partners tried something she discovered she didn’t like, there was almost nothing negative in her experiences. After “Dave” and “Lars,” she had become adept at spotting and avoiding men whose agendas were potentially hurtful to her, finding instead men who just wanted to have, and share, a good time. One of her partners, as a kindly-intended joke, had labeled her a “sport fuck,” and she’d liked the term.

She’d avoided commitment, sticking to “sport fucking,” because part of her was hoping to reunite with either him or Ewan Zdan—and she had, realistically, assumed that it wouldn’t be him she reunited with, even if she chose men who reminded her of him almost half the time—and she’d wanted to avoid any entanglements that would potentially prevent that from happening.

An hour of meditating over her experiences finally calmed the part of him that wanted to unleash mayhem—far too late to be of any use—upon Kyra’s tormentors, and finally made him feel like it was safe for other people to be around him again.

Okay. Time to deal with the other recruits… and then I think I need to talk to her.

The group he’d left in one of the suites adjacent to his rooms perked up as soon as he walked in.

“We’re picking Door Number One,” one of them said. It was no surprise that he was their spokesman again. “We’re all in. What do you need us to do?”

All nine of them. Good. Everyone looked enthusiastic, too. Even better.

“What I’m about to do to each of you is gonna hurt. You braced for that?” Making sure they knew that, were okay with that and prepared for it, was more important than ever suddenly.

“I’m in.” Their leader stepped forward. He was in his early twenties at most, his dark brown skin hiding the corpselike pallor of a Necromonger, closely buzzed hair sporting tiny curls instead of the box braids Riddick had seen in Jack’s memories. “Do me first, whatever it is you need to do.”

One by one, he brought them back from their undead states. It got easier and easier each time, the pain of his conditioning eroding away. Finally, all nine of them were human again, revived and looking astounded.

“Man,” the leader—Antonio—said, after the last conversion was undone, “I had no idea what you were gonna do, but you could ask me to do anything now and I’d be in. There’s no way to thank you enough.”

His friends murmured agreements around them.

“That’s good to hear. Now, let me tell you why I picked you.” He was feeling increasingly at ease, the darkness of Kyra’s experiences retreating for the moment. “You remember, about five and a half years ago, a pair of girls coming out of the spaceport to talk to you about doing a special performance? One of them told you her brother had fucked up his relationship with his girlfriend—Gina—and she wanted you to serenade Gina on his behalf to help win her back?”

He could see recognition spreading over their faces… and delight.

“Remember?” Antonio said as his face split into a huge grin. “Damn! We made so much scratch that day thanks to her! Got some primo gigs out of it, too!”

“Pretty sure the lady we sang to had no clue what was going on, though,” one of the women in the group—Nichelle, a soprano—laughed.

“Aww, who cares?” the group’s tenor, a guy named Malik, laughed back. “It was still gold. How do you know about it, though, Sir?”

“The girl who asked you to do it,” he told them, “is someone special to me. You’ll get to see her again soon. I’m wondering if you can put together a little show for her. And then maybe you can also be in charge of getting some actual life into this flying crypt.”

“What’s your friend’s name?” Antonio asked, grinning. “We’ll need that for the show we put together.”

The name was an issue, wasn’t it? There were multiple possibilities. But only one, he realized, that was safe to use, given who else was on board this ship. Everyone there already knew that he had been seeking his “Jack.” Connecting that name to either of the others that popped into his head could be incredibly dangerous.

Jack it is, he decided. He hoped she’d go along with it.

“She liked to go by ‘Jack’ back then. That work for you?”

“We’re on it,” Antonio promised. “When do you need us to be ready?”

“Gimme a day. Still a few things left to do. And it’s a surprise. I’m gonna ask you to move into some of the suites right by mine, but not to cross paths with her until it’s time for your performance.”

“We need to worry about her overhearing?” the group’s contralto, Nomiki, asked.

“Nah,” he told them. “These walls are pretty thick stone. You should be fine.”

Weird thing for a spaceship’s walls to be made of, now that he thought about it…

He took a few moments to talk to the crews getting the other suites ready and instruct them to determine with the team—apparently called the Ennead Kids back when Jack had encountered them, and they’d never changed the name—how they wanted to arrange and divide up four of the suites between them. With five men and four women in the group, things might get tricky, so he told the crews to let him know if any additional rooms were needed. He’d ordered almost the entire wing vacated after the first few assassination attempts against him, so there was space to spare. Soon, he told the crew leaders, the women who would occupy the remaining two suites would come to speak to them as well.

Okay. Enough dawdling, he told himself. You need to talk to Jack.

Yes, Lucy said from somewhere nearby. You have centered yourself in the light again.

He groaned. There you go, talkin’ about me like I’m the good guy in this story…

Surely you don’t believe that you’re the villain of the piece? There was a hint of both amusement and sadness behind her words.

No wonder, he reflected, Kyra had said that she hated not being the bad guys. Jack had reflected on that, too, contemplating how much better the ’verse would be if only they were the worst villains in it…

And now he needed to tell her. Fuck.

C’mon, you asshole, he prodded himself. This is Jack. She ain’t gonna bite you unless you ask nice.

But, he thought with a sinking heart, she might cry when she heard what he had to tell her. Hell, no “might” about it.

He forced himself to return to his quarters. By the time he reached the doors, there was no sign of his reluctance, his hesitation… no sign that he was in any way bothered by what he had to do next.

Four women were talking and laughing together as he walked in. Someone must have told a really funny joke, because it took them a moment to recover their composure. None of them looked at all discomfited by his entry, though.

He didn’t bother asking what the joke was. He knew, from Jack’s memories, just how raunchy women’s conversations could get when no man was around, and he didn’t feel like embarrassing them by making them explain it all to him.

Jack stood up and walked over to him, her smile bright, and gave him another hug. He held her close, not trying to hide just how much he needed to hold onto her for a spell.

Apparently they all could tell.

“We should go for a while,” Lola said, surprising him. He’d expected her to start trying to run interference.

He lifted his face from where he’d buried it in Jack’s hair. “I have a pair of suites being readied for you three. If you go talk to the crew preparing them, they can get things ready the way you want them. Talk to Olwyn or Jean-Paul. The guards outside know who they are.”

The three women filed out of the room without another word, leaving him alone with Jack.

“Just the three of them, huh?” Jack asked him, her expression amused, not trying to pull back from the tight circle of his arms.

He nodded, still trying to decide what he should tell her first.

“So,” she continued after a moment, “I guess it’s time for us to talk about things?”

He nodded again, wishing he wasn’t feeling so tongue-tied, wishing he dared open up his mind to her without all of the things that he never wanted her to know about pouring out amid the things he was struggling to say.

Her hand on his cheek was warm and gentle. “Should we sit down?” Her expression had taken on a look of concern.

He was choking on the words he needed to get out. Keeping her close, he walked over to the entry into the bedroom and led her through, sitting down on the edge of the bed with her beside him. “This… ain’t easy.”

“It’s okay.” The girl reached over and took his hand. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

Deep breath…

Oh for fuck’s sake, just tell her already…

“It’s about Kyra.” He watched her as she nodded, her expression expectant. Oh fuck, this was gonna be bad. “You know I found her last year, right, when I was looking for you?”

“Yeah…?”

“She…” Fuck. Just say it… “She was killed during my fight with the old Lord Marshal.” He forced himself to meet Jack’s eyes as he said it. “She’s dead.”

Jack blinked, her expression becoming confused. In a moment, he was sure, her face would crumple as the pain hit. “That’s… not possible.”

“It’s the truth,” he said in the gentlest voice he could manage.

The girl shook her head. “No, Riddick, I was with her just this morning. She’s not dead. The Apeiros have her.”