I should probably just change my pen name to i-heart-ghouls-and-slavery.

Chapter 2

We half-walked, half-slid down our fourth or fifth slope and finally came to more even ground. The hill had dumped us into a clearing that must have been logged out a long time ago. Every so often a rotted stump poked out of the ground. I couldn't see a road anywhere.

"Are you sure you know where you're going?" I asked.

Bruce looked around. He was breathing strangely again. "Relatively sure."

I looked at him.

"I apologize. I'm doing the best I can."

I shrugged, looking around the clearing in annoyance. It wasn't like I could help any. As he continued forward toward a copse of dead trees at the far edge of the clearing, he pulled an inhaler out of a pocket and put it up to his mouth.

"You do jet?" I asked before he sucked in. I let you do jet? is what I meant.

"No, ma'am," he said, still holding it in front of his face. "It's Breathe-Easy. I have asthma."

"I bought an asthmatic slave?"

"I guess so, ma'am."

I wondered if I'd been a bit stupid in my previous life. "Is it usually this bad?" I asked, suddenly apprehensive. I didn't want anything to happen to my only connection to my history, and the only person I'd met in the wastes so far, even if he didn't seem to have a lot of answers. Having him there helped put me at ease, even if he hadn't been very useful so far.

"Yes, when we're moving quickly. It will get better if I take this."

I thought we'd been walking at a fairly slow pace. "How much of that do you have?"

"This is my only inhaler. It's almost empty."

"Maybe you should save it."

He took a long, slow breath. "Is that what you'd like me to do, ma'am?"

I shrugged. "They're your lungs. I trust you know how best to keep yourself from dying. We could slow down, if that'll help."

"That...would be helpful," he said, inclining his head slightly. "If it's not too much of an inconvenience."

"Well, yeah, it is. But there's not much we can do about that, is there?"

He slowed after that, and put the inhaler back in his jacket pocket without using it. Most of the trees in the patch of forest we passed were dead, but there were green blades of grass poking up through the organic debris on the ground. Occasionally there was a fern, some bright green and some more sickly. I even saw some flowers. I made sure not to step on any of them.

"So what were we doing all the way out here?" I asked.

"We were pursuing a target."

"Target?" I said. "Oh. Right. Mercenary. How does that work?"

"We have a mediator who organizes clients for you in areas across Seattle and the settlements around it. I meet with our mediators to get contracts and payments, so I'm the only one they ever see. I bring the contracts back to you, and you complete them."

"No one knows who I am, then?"

"No."

Not even me. Sort of ironic. Or something. "So whoever tried to kill me must have followed you out here, then just waited for the right time to shoot."

"Yes...I think that must have been what happened," he admitted hesitantly.

I may have just imagined him hunching his shoulders slightly as I walked behind him. "Well, that was stupid of you," I commented. He did not reply.

I wondered if he was going to be more trouble than he was worth. He didn't seem very smart, he could barely walk without loosing his breath, and he didn't look like he'd be any good in a fight. I wondered if I should just get rid of him after I'd learned as much as I could from him. "How long have we been together?" I asked.

"Almost five years, ma'am."

Wow. Longer than I'd guessed. I supposed, since I'd kept him around for that long, that he must have been doing something right. And now that I thought about it, anyway, I couldn't exactly just sell him—he had that chip in his chest. Unless we could get it out, I'd have to kill him unless I wanted him following me around for the rest of my life. I didn't think he quite deserved that. Not yet, at least. But maybe there was someone who could take the chip out. I guessed that would be a delicate operation—there had to be something preventing him from just cutting it out himself—but you never knew.

Would he even want to cut it out, though? He didn't seem particularly unhappy with me, or his position. He didn't look like he had many feelings at all.

We walked over more hills and through dead forests for another half hour or so before we came to a dirt road and switched our direction slightly to follow it. I kept asking Bruce more questions at first, but talking seemed to make him lose his breath and slow down even more, so I grudgingly kept silent after the first few inquiries. Gradually we left the forested area and the terrain got flatter. The road went from dirt to gravel to cracked pavement. We seemed to be getting closer to civilization, whatever there was left of it.

I decided to stop when we came to a small bridge. Water oozed slowly underneath it. My stomach was growling. We didn't have any food, but water was better than nothing. I climbed down the bank and knelt next to the water in the shade of the bridge. I'd scooped up several handfuls and sucked them down before Bruce knelt down next to me and stuck his face directly into the stream. I scrubbed at the side of my head where blood was encrusted over my skin. It came off in thick, slimy, red flakes. I winced when I hit the cut where a bullet had scraped my skull, and quickly ceased cleaning.

"Do you have a geiger counter?" I asked.

"No, ma'am," he said, swallowing as he came up from the water and sat on his knees. A few drops of water clung to the ear flaps of his hat where they'd brushed the surface of the water.

We'd have to get one. One more thing to add to the list.

I took one more drink, then sat back. The shade felt nice. I glanced over at him. He'd taken off his scarf but still wore the coat and hat. "Aren't you hot?"

"No, ma'am."

I shrugged disinterestedly.

We'd been sitting for a while when I felt an itch on my left leg. I reached down absently to scratch it. I stopped and turned to stare at it when I touched it. My heart practically stopped. I grabbed the bottom of my pant leg and jerked it up.

Underneath was only a metal rod that came out below my knee and disappeared into my boot.

"What is this?" I said breathlessly.

I looked up at Bruce. He was looking at me oddly.

"What the fuck is this?" I asked again.

He opened his mouth hesitantly, looking unsure of what to say.

I reached out and seized the front of his shirt, pointing to the metal. He flinched.

"Where the fuck is my leg?"

"I don't know!" he said. "It's been like that since before I met you. You never told me what happened." He was very stiff, hunched into himself and leaning as far away from me as he could with me still holding onto him. His glasses had slid down his nose, and he stared out at me from over the tops of the rims. "You didn't notice it until now?" he questioned carefully.

"...It felt normal."

"It is normal," he said. "When I met you, you were already adept at using it. It's been that way for a long time. You probably stepped on a mine when you were young."

I stared at him for a moment longer, then let go and sat back. He readjusted his glasses. I looked down at the rod. It connected to a cup covering the upper edge of my shin. "It itched," I said.

"That's a phantom limb. It's common for amputees to have the sensation. You've complained of it before."

I shoved my pant leg back down to my ankle (the pants were too short for me and it only reached as far as the tops of my boots). Now it began to hurt, not just itch. "Is there anything else I should know before I get any more nice surprises like that?"

"Nothing that I can think of, ma'am."

I was missing a goddamn foot. How the hell had I not noticed that?

But...maybe that was a good thing. Like Bruce said, I was used to it. Maybe it wouldn't be a problem.

Not wanting to think about it anymore, I pulled my bag out in front of me. "What's with all this crap I'm carrying around?"

"...crap?"

I dumped the contents of the pack on the gravel beside the stream.

Bruce studied the objects briefly, and shrugged slowly. There wasn't much there that wasn't self-explanatory, I suppose. I was more frustrated about what wasn't there than what was. "I think the people who shot me took my stuff before they left."

"That is probably an accurate assumption, ma'am. I'm missing some of my things as well."

"Did I use to have more weapons than just the rifle, then?"

"Yes, ma'am. In the past you have also carried a submachine gun and pistol."

"And did we use to have food and caps?"

"Yes, ma'am."

My stomach growled again. "Where are we going to get more money? We can't wait to eat until the next time I get a job," I said. "What about the contract we just had? You said we were going after someone. Did we get them?"

"Our most recent contract was probably a fake ordered by the bounty hunters themselves. I doubt there was any real target; they just wanted to follow me back to you after I talked to our mediator."

"How come they didn't shoot you?" I suddenly wondered. "You only got a bump on the head."

"The bounty is not for me, ma'am. I think they suspect I'm a slave. I think they don't know that we're implanted, or they wouldn't have bothered stipulating that I be left alive."

"They want you alive? That's nicer than I'd expect, from bounty hunters."

"The reward is being offered by the Regulators. They pride themselves on their code of ethics."

"Huh," I said. "Maybe we should tell them about the chips, then."

"I wouldn't recommend that, ma'am," Bruce said quickly.

"Yeah, I was joking."

My eyes went back to the pile of stuff on the ground. "What about this?" I asked, holding up the magazine, the only item that still didn't make sense to me. I looked at Bruce. "Can you read?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"What's it say?"

He took the magazine from me and looked at the first page, which was actually somewhere in the middle of the original book; the rest had been torn away. " 'Want to land yourself a man?' " he read aloud. " 'Follow these ten easy tips and'—"

"Stop," I said immediately. He lowered the magazine and looked up at me. I slowly reached out and took it back. I looked at the faded ink of the text. "Why did I have this?"

"I don't know, ma'am."

I tossed the bundle of paper into the stream in annoyance. If only you could eat paper.

"So," I said, counting off on my fingers. "We need to find a doctor, first." My head had been pounding since I woke up. I tried to ignore it. "Then, we need to get some food. Then we need to get some more ammo—" I paused to look at Bruce again. "How many shells do you have for that thing?"

"Five, ma'am."

"Okay. We definitely need more of those. Maybe that should be moved to the top of the list. Then, we need to go find the mediator who gave us that fake contract and see what he knows about the people who ordered it."

"You want to find the bounty hunters, ma'am?"

I snorted. "You better believe I do." I stood up, then squinted down at him. "Look, will you stop calling me 'ma'am' all the time? I thought I would get used to it, but I really don't think it's going to work out."

"Yes. What should I call you instead?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. 'Hey you' works."

"Okay."

"Did I tell you to call me that before, or did you start doing it on your own?"

"I've always addressed you that way. You never objected to it before."

"I see. Well, come on. We've got a lot to do, and I'm hungry."

"Yes, ma—yes."

He stood up, then froze.

"What?" I said.

"Ma'am, please don't move," he said quietly. He slowly pulled his shotgun from his side.

I glared at him, but didn't move. "What the are you doing?"

There was a sudden scrabbling on the rocks behind me, and I turned to look. There was a screech behind me, then the boom of the shotgun, and my arm suddenly stung. I dropped to the ground to avoid further shots. There was another report as Bruce shot again.

I watched as he held the gun up for another few seconds, then lowered it a bit to look at whatever he'd been shooting at. I looked behind me, and there was a dead yao guai on the rocks bleeding into the river. My arm throbbed, and I looked down at it. Several small spots in my upper arm dripped blood down to my elbow.

"You idiot, you shot me!"

He lowered the gun all the way, gaping at me. "I apologize. You moved."

"You apologize?" I growled and stood up. "I moved? Are you trying to tell me it's my fault that you just shot me?"

He opened and closed his mouth. "No," he said quickly. "It's my fault."

I looked down at my arm again. One more thing to get the doctor to fix. I muttered a curse and turned to climb up the bank, kicking aside a leg of the yao guai on my way.