Peshek frowned. “Why were you out so long?”
“What day is it?” he asked. Now his whole left leg and part of his stomach felt numb.
Peshek glanced at the charred hole in the wall, then rolled her eyes in annoyance. She pulled back her sleeve to reveal a cuff-style percomp and made it display a large holo of the Galactic Standard Date and Time.
“The other three with you woke up thirty-six hours ago” She pointed a thumb toward the empty medical carts. Her tone seemed to accuse him of malingering.
Six days since he’d been lured and snared. Time he couldn’t afford, considering he still had to figure out how to escape the current chaos cauldron he was in.
A familiar lassitude began to sneak into his thoughts. The sifter was trying to twiddle his brain receptors to make him more pliable and happy to babble out loud whatever crossed his mind. He smiled. The joke was on them. To hear his last ex-lover tell it, he had shit for brains. Can’t get sense from shit.
Besides, now his whole left side was numb. His head sank downward, too heavy to keep tilted toward his visitors.
Peshek grimaced. “Shit!”
Zade smiled wider. “Exactly what she said!” It sounded garbled, but he knew what he meant.
Peshek grabbed another jet. “I thought you said no allergies!”
“All the tests were negative!” the tech protested.
Something shoved him sideways. A pounding heartbeat later, his veins caught fire. His implants couldn’t block his own screams. Twilight, that back-alley thug, zeroed him again.
* * *
This time, he awoke to an impressive string of profanity that covered half a dozen of humanity’s major languages.
The fire was gone. So was the numbness. A weird aftertaste made him wonder if they’d fed him hydroponic moss. Cautiously, he opened his eyes.
Same room. Peshek and her tech minion were still there, hovering watchfully. The tech now held a scanner that he was showing to Peshek.
She nodded, waving the scanner away. “That’s better.”
Peshek turned back to Zade. “What else are you allergic to besides sinamakri? Any other relaxers?”
“Most of them, actually. Pressors and vasopressors, too. Some endo-uptake inhibitors. Maybe a GABA energy-stim, but that might have been the contaminated Lautauro Spark I drank.”
“Truth,” said the sifter, who was now seated on the floor. She looked tired.
Peshek’s mouth twisted in disdain as she poked at her tablet, then handed it to the tech. “When we’re done here, find the pharma techs who ran the tests and space them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Zade couldn’t tell from the tech’s straight face if Peshek was joking or giving an actual order.
“Your turn, Bolerdi.” Peshek motioned to the gaunt sifter. “I’d have to synthesize the right chems to make him pliant but not kill him, and that would take days.” Peshek and the tech pulled the cart back and stepped out of the way.
Bolerdi stood and made a token attempt to brush the dust off her pants. She glanced at his naked body, but her expression didn’t evince interest. “Low-level empath, huh?”
The languid feeling came sneaking back, meaning she was messing with his receptors again.
“That’s what the CPS test said.” He chose his words carefully. “I don’t know low from high.”
“Any other talents?” She looked distracted for a moment, then spat a curse. “You’re telepath immune.”
Interesting. Bolerdi was both a sifter and a telepath.
“So I’m told.” That fact over-torqued the jets of most telepaths, and Bolerdi was no exception. Zade quite liked it in moments like this.
