XII. Something Rotten
When he felt the thud against his rib cage, Spike instinctively threw out a roundhouse kick, hoping to take down whoever had managed to sucker-punch him. It wasn't until a few seconds later, when he felt his shirt sticking to his side, that he realized he had been shot and not hit. Cold spread out across his chest from left to right, and down so that his left hip threatened to give out under his weight. He fell back into a sheltered crouch next to a huge oak desk, and scooted back and under it, breathing shallow, the room swimming in his left-eye view. Nausea crept up his throat as he tried to stay conscious.
Dully, he realized Vicious' boots were inches from his hiding place. "Vicious," he called out, as quietly as he could, "Get me out of here." He saw the swirl of a coat and the flash of the katana, and then Vicious knelt in front of him, eyes blazing.
Vicious assessed his wounded partner in one hasty look, and Spike was surprised to see relief on his face, because the words that formed on his lips were, "I will avenge you." He was out of Spike's range of vision before he could protest, and the room swirled into blackness.
His next conscious thought was that he was pushing through a strange, gray fog, for all appearances ordinary, except that it seemed to cling to his outstretched arms and face and keep his eyes from opening fully. He heard voices all around, unfamiliar, and thought for a sickening moment that he was back in the Tigers' torture chamber, that he couldn't open his eyes or see because they'd managed to take both of them this time. He couldn't hear with the blood rushing in his ears when he tried to move, so he lay still, taking in what he could.
"Did you see their faces?" a gleeful exclamation, from a thick-sounding man. "Just like at Henshai's, only this time they thought they had us set up!"
A snicker, from another direction. "I didn't see the girl who let Reno get away last time. Wonder if she got demoted to the kitchen." This voice was thin, almost whiny – young. Spike tried to match the voices to the faces he had seen when they entered the warehouse; he knew now that he was in the present, alive somehow and without his comrades. He thought he could hear four people in the hearty laughter that followed.
He drifted, not sure if the voices were moving away or if he was losing consciousness again, but finally he heard the clunk of a crossbolt as the warehouse door closed.
Summoning his martial arts concentration as best he could, he slowed his pounding heartbeat so that he could open his eyes without dizziness. To great relief, he discovered he still had both of them – his one-step-behind left, and his perfect right. He tried to reach his lighter with his left hand, but that side of his body was uncooperative, so he twisted his right arm around to the opposite pocket of his trenchcoat, and sparked the flint. In the dim glow, he thought for a moment he was lying in a pool of motor oil, but as his eyes adjusted and color resolved, he realized he was surrounded, for at least a two-foot radius all around his torso, with what was probably his own blood.
Bile rose in his throat and his vision swam again. Perspective stretched in and out like someone playing with the focus on an old 35MM camera. He heaved himself forward onto his right hand, dropping the lighter, retching, but the pain of the motion was so great that he stopped moving and breathing altogether. When the wave had passed, he sucked in a thin breath through his nose, trying not to hyperventilate, and struggled to stand, cradling his numb left arm across the open wound that seemed to lead directly to his heart.
Maybe they didn't hit it, he thought, maybe I'm the most heartless son of a bitch on Mars.
He had to let go of the limp arm to raise the crossbolt that held the door closed, and when he did, pain seared through his rib cage and shoulder, snapping him completely awake. He panted like an animal, could feel the cold as the wind rushed over the sheen of sweat on his face, over his clothes no doubt so wet from blood. When he took stock of his location, though, his step faltered, and he leaned against the doorway while he weighed the value of survival against the trek through no-man's-land into a neighborhood where he doubted anyone would open a door to him.
But he hadn't survived this wound so far just to lie down and die twenty feet from where it bled out, and so he began the walk. He tried to stay as straight on course as possible, to reduce the effort required to make progress. From a distance, he looked like he stood at an impossible angle, both arms folded over his bleeding torso, leaning forward and catching himself from falling at the last second by throwing a long, thin leg out in front. In this way, he eventually found himself at a wider street, and he looked up and around, turning right because that was the leg that seemed more likely to hold him.
The light from the shop windows made his head pound, and the pounding made him nauseous again. He bumped into a trash can, looked up, and saw loaves of bread on the other side of the glass. Something about bread... Something about a bakery. And this place. And then he realized that he was only a few feet from Julia's stairway. Julia hadn't gone with them tonight. Julia might be at home.
His strength flagged as he contemplated a stopping place. One foot in front of the other, he thought while the fog tunneled around his left-side peripheral vision. Keep moving. And then a flash of light distracted him, and he felt air rush past as he toppled forward onto the sidewalk. The light had come from a doorway – Julia's doorway – and there, like Charon waiting to take him across the river, was Julia, with her coat on and her handbag clutched. He met her eyes for a brief second, saw the shock register there, and then let the blackness take him.
***
Julia dropped her book with a half-sigh and picked up the buzzing comm. It was almost midnight; not an unusual time for Vicious to call, but also past the hour when she wanted to be summoned out of her evening routine. One look at his face had her gathering her effects, though – he had told her he was meeting with the Van tonight, but his hair was matted with blood and a fresh bandage covered the bridge of his nose. "What the hell happened?" she demanded as she pulled on a shoe.
From Vicious' end, the images on the comm. were a blur of her apartment at strange angles, making him dizzy. "Julia! Sit down," he barked in a tight voice. She did so before she realized it.
"Better," he nodded. "We got set up."
She furrowed her brow at the comm. "The Van? What happened?" she asked again.
He hesitated a moment before replying. "We didn't meet with the Van tonight. We went to make sure a sale with Rocket went through as planned. Spike found out he's been skipping shipments."
"Why didn't you call me?" It had been almost three weeks since that strange night with him and then Spike; she had thought it all behind them.
"We had everyone we needed at the tower," he said dismissively. "I didn't really think we needed heavy artillery. We've been breaking Rocket down ever since this assignment started."
"But he set us up? Who went with you? Who knew about it?"
"Just me," Vicious sighed. "I took Spike and Lin, and Marcus. Last minute," he repeated.
"What do we do now?" She waited for the meet location, the list of artillery to bring with her, which car she was to drive.
Vicious dropped his eyes from the comm. She realized with a sick jolt that this wasn't just a political issue.
"Vicious, what happened?"
"The first thing we do is bury Spike."
The room swam. Noise from the street below grew louder; the headlights of a passing car tracked across the ceiling. The comm. fell to her lap, forgotten, and images flashed through her mind – a pool hall, Vicious and Spike hustling the patrons; Vicious and Spike sitting in the overstuffed armchairs of the Dragon library, dirty boots on the antique coffee tables; Spike's face shifting from pain to anger as a bullet hit his shoulder and spun him around at Henshai's; the look of helpless confusion he gave her when she broke down in front of him later that night.
"No," she said to the yellow walls. "No."
Vicious broke the reverie. "Julia, I need you. I need your help." If she had been in any other frame of mind, it would have sounded foreign, but she just looked at the comm. in her hand, nodded, and shut it off.
She drew herself up off the couch, packed the comm. and her gun in her purse, and pulled her coat on before turning off the light.
The stairs stretched out for a million miles in front of her, and she gripped the railing as she descended. Finally at the bottom, she leaned against the door handle for a moment, willing the nausea and the tears to subside before she went out to face the night. The first thing she heard as she pushed it open was the baker, Holling, asking "Are you all right?" She turned in his direction, but he wasn't looking at her. He was looking down at the sidewalk, and she followed his gaze to the fallen form in front of her – long limbs splayed beneath a black trenchcoat, a shock of green- black hair, blood and rust-brown eyes. They met her confused expression before the face – Spike's face, she knew, but could not process – dropped to the sidewalk and was still.
She wasn't sure how many seconds passed while she stood there, holding the door open, trying to piece together the scene in front of her. It was Holling who got to him first, shaking his shoulder, checking his pulse, and then looking up at Julia. "Don't you know this guy?"
She nodded and shook herself, dropped to her knees, and gently lifted one of his shoulders to turn him over. He seemed impossibly heavy, but he was still breathing – she could hear it, a horrible, wet, rattling sound. She gasped at the blood that had stained every inch of his gray dress shirt; his coat was sticky with it and she fingered a hole in the back where a bullet had obviously blown through. She had no idea how he was alive – now she had spotted the entrance wound, on the left side, where his heart would be. Looking up at Holling, who was clearly out of his element, she said, "We have to get him off the street."
"I'm sorry, Julia, but he can't come in my shop."
She shook her head. "No, I'll take him to my apartment."
"He needs to go to a hospital!" Holling was pulling his comm. out of his apron pocket, but she shook her head again.
"I can help him. And if I can't, he doesn't have time to make it to the hospital, either. Please help me?"
Holling weighed his options, saw that he already had blood on his pants where he'd knelt beside Spike, and issued a curt grunt. He propped the shop door open with an elbow, called out, "Back in a minute!" and turned back to her. "You think we should move him?"
Julia looked down the sidewalk at the unmistakable trail of blood. "He got here by himself, so I doubt moving him now would do any new damage." She took off her coat and laid it on the ground. "Let's get him onto this, and then we can use it like a litter to carry him." She didn't bother explaining that she hoped to prevent the blood trail continuing straight to her apartment, but she did tell Holling sharply, "If anyone comes in and asks, you saw him get into a car. A gray sedan. You didn't see the drivers. All right?"
He glared at her. "What are you into, Julia?"
"No time," she replied.
The truth was that they had plenty of time, as they struggled to get Spike up the three flights of stairs to her apartment. They spent it in silence all the same; Julia was baffled at how a man who was barely visible sideways could weigh what felt like at least two hundred pounds. He did not stir during the transport, but kept up with the ragged shallow breathing, and she dared to let herself hope when they reached her door. She discovered she had forgotten to lock it when she left – all the better, since they would have had to put Spike down for her to find her keys. She shouldered the light switch and looked around the room, wondering where on earth to put him.
"Bathtub," Holling grunted. "I don't think I can hold him up much longer. He'll ruin your floor anywhere else."
She nodded and led the way to the bathroom, her fingers going numb from clinging to the fabric of her coat. They levered Spike into the clawfoot tub where he sprawled, head over the rounded back lip, arms akimbo, feet on either side of the water faucet. It would have been comical, had the position not also afforded her a very clear view of his blood-soaked clothing, ashen face, and that awful high-caliber hole through his shirt, right over the heart.
She stood, found a towel, and handed it to Holling. "Thank you. I owe you. Remember, gray sedan, didn't see the drivers. You didn't notice until they pulled over and stopped."
He glared at her. "Girl like you shouldn't associate with punks and gangs," he muttered. "Gotta go change my pants."
If he only knew... a girl like her could hold her own with the punks and the gangs. She pulled a fistful of cash from her pocket and peeled off a few thousand. "For some new pants," she replied. "Thank you again."
He shook his head and let himself out, grumbling under his breath.
Julia stared down at Spike for a few moments, taking in the bloody trail a workboot sole had left across his cheek, the deep split in his chin from a hard punch, the angry red lump on his temple. He hadn't just been shot – he had been battered. On autopilot, she stood and went to collect a pitcher, towels, and medical supplies. Everywhere she went, she could hear the rattle of his breath, and in a strange way it comforted her. The pace of it had evened out. She returned and started the faucet, watching the blood spreading out in tendrils through the water in the bottom of the tub. When it was warm, she filled the pitcher and lifted it to rinse his chin and neck.
She laid a hand on the side of his face and was shocked at how cold he felt. If she undressed him in the open air, he'd be freezing, she realized, and turned on the heat register as she closed the door. While she waited for the temperature to rise, she struggled with his necktie, but it was soaked with drying blood, and she had to cut it away with the surgical scissors. She dropped it on the floor and went to work unbuttoning his shirt; that, too, proved near impossible and she finally pulled her throwing knife from its sheath on her thigh and slashed the cloth away.
"That's why you're alive," she whispered with simultaneous relief and horror. His shirt must have been twisted across his chest when the bullet hit, because the actual wound was a gaping hole about an inch into his rib cage. She could see bone at the edge of the hole, but despite his rattling breath, the blood had congealed without bubbling. The bullet had missed his lung as well.
Satisfied that she could deal with it, as long as there were not worse surprises in store, she set to work getting him undressed to clean the wound properly. She pulled his collar back and understood why he was so heavy – the high collared shirts and jackets he always wore camouflaged thickly muscled shoulders that sloped the full width across. "You're tougher than you look," she told the unconscious man. "Of course, I knew that anyway, but now I know your secret." With the throwing knife, she cut the length of each shirt and jacket sleeve from collar to cuff, peeling back the bloody cloth and revealing the rest of his torso. Now she could see more damage: the knife wound in his left shoulder where the stitches had barely healed, defensive bruises and cuts on his forearms where he'd blocked other blows. The wiry, sculpted muscle of those arms surprised her as his shoulders had – in a bomber jacket, he looked like a skinny kid, but he obviously devoted tremendous attention to his physique. Strange, because other than his flirtation with her when they first met, she couldn't remember Spike giving much more than the time of day to any woman he'd been around in her company. "You take this whole tough guy thing a lot more seriously than you let on," she said.
He mumbled something and a blush spread across her face at the fact that she'd been staring at him instead of working on his wounds, but he didn't seem conscious. It had certainly gotten hot enough that he was in no danger of a chill. She looked at her dress, stuck to her chest and arms with blood and sweat, and gave him another long look to see if he would stir before peeling down to her underwear and dropping the ruined clothing with his own on the floor.
She found a rhythm in washing him, with the water thundering at the drain. After a dozen pitchers, it had begun to run only slightly pink unless it came into contact with the hole in his chest, so she turned it off and set to work with the antibiotic foam. She was mystified at what to do with the damage to the bone, but from what she could see his rib had chipped rather than shattered, at least in front. She gagged as she tweezed the stray pieces out. "I thought stitches were bad," she told him, keeping conversation so she wouldn't have to think about the task too hard. Those were easy after the bone-fishing project, and for the second time she felt grateful he was unconscious, this time because he wouldn't complain as she stitched him up.
"I think we're almost done," she told him when his shoulder and chest were sewn together and his face bandaged. "One more mending project." She pushed his right arm down, trying to leverage his weight so she could get him turned on his side in the tub. But his legs were too long and had to be moved first; she could see that he had begun bleeding again while she jostled him. For the first time it dawned on her that she might have a difficult time getting him out of the tub when she was finished. And in turn, she realized for the first time that she had not showed up to meet Vicious. She fumbled in the pocket of her jacket where it hung over the edge of the tub and pulled out the comm. It was mostly dry, though blood had seeped through the lining onto the screen. She dialed Vicious and hastily pulled a towel around her shoulders, realizing what he'd see when he picked up.
He did so on the first buzz, his face flat and calm. "You're alive. Good."
"Vicious, I'm sorry. But Spike is alive. He's here. He showed up here, right as I was leaving. I was so worried about – "
"He came to your apartment?" he interrupted. "He could have gotten you killed, he could have led someone there!"
"But he's alive," she argued. "He's alive and I think he'll make it."
She saw confusion cross Vicious' features so briefly she might have imagined it. "Which is good news. But Julia, he's barely three blocks from where the ambush happened. What were you thinking taking him into your apartment?"
She glared at the screen. "I didn't know about your little adventure, remember? I didn't know it was practically in my back yard. Why doesn't it matter to you that Spike is alive?"
He spoke to someone off-screen in a tone that didn't carry over the comm. "Yes," he said, turning back to her, "Of course I am glad he is alive. But I am upset that he could have taken you down with him if he were not."
"I need help moving him. He's in the bathtub. He can't stay there." She rushed through the words, nervous at Vicious' reaction and hoping that a task to do would make him drop the line of conversation.
But he was intent on the details of her situation. "Who saw you take him upstairs?"
"Holling helped me. It was past midnight; I don't think anyone saw us. I told him to say he saw Spike get into a gray sedan if anyone happened to ask."
"Good. That's a start. But I cannot come back there tonight," he went on, almost to himself. "If you managed to get Spike upstairs without being seen, it would be foolish for me to draw attention to you again."
"What am I supposed to do?" she asked, desperation creeping into her tone. "Look at him." She aimed the comm. at his body in the bathtub, slumped to one side, the angry wound in his back still exposed.
"Wait until he wakes up and let him get up himself," was the best Vicious could offer. "I'll contact you again in the morning."
She stared helplessly at the comm. Vicious cut off the question she was formulating. "I'm pretty sure he was shot in the leg as well," he said. "Would have been easy to miss in all that blood." And the comm. went dark, leaving her alone again with an unconscious man in her bathroom.
She supposed Vicious had a point. She'd have to try and revive Spike; he had walked three blocks to find her, so there was a good chance he'd come around eventually. The news of a bullet in his leg worried her, although it explained why so much blood had appeared when she tried to turn him over. She worked quickly to clean and stitch the wound on his back, gagging her way through another fishing expedition with the bits of back rib that had been shattered when the bullet punched through between them. "At least there's no bullet to retrieve," she said, bringing him up to speed. He had nothing to say. "Lucky for you they didn't bother using their crosstips on you guys."
With the through-and-through hole patched, she explored his legs, finally finding the injury Vicious had mentioned. It was little more than a graze, an angry and bleeding welt but not an entry wound. It would make moving painful, she knew from experience – right at the point where his hip bent, it would not heal unless immobile and it would protest mightily if not. She unbuckled his belt and managed to pull it free, and then contemplated destroying the rest of his clothing with the knife. What would he do if he were awake? Would he even allow her to work on this injury? She shook his right shoulder gently, the towel-and-underwear getup forgotten. "Spike?" He didn't stir. "Spike!" she shouted, the name echoing back to her off the tile of the shower. She lifted his right eyelid and his iris immediately contracted against the light, staring straight ahead.
She was about to berate him for playing possum when she looked more closely at the eye. She'd always known it was a slight mismatch for his other one, but now she saw that the eyeball was perfectly white, the iris patterns too perfect, the circle around his pupil too symmetrical. It was a cybernetic eye, a very well made and obviously functional one. It must have responded to the light in the room even though his brain took no notice.
To test her theory, she let it close and lifted the left lid. The iris of this one was barely visible, rolled upward. She felt a surge of guilt for doubting him and laid a palm against his cheek, whispering, "Forgive me. I think I'm about to violate you."
Removing his boots proved a challenge. They didn't seem to have any zippers or fasteners, and hugged his feet like permanent appendages. Eventually she managed to get one off and fell back, not expecting its weight. They looked so strangely feminine, with their round toe, but she saw now that the toes were solid metal, the inside of the boot lined in sherpa fleece for comfort. No wonder a kick from him did so much damage.
When the other boot was off, the throwing knife slid through his pant leg as though it were paper. She parted the two sides of the cloth and cut his boxers, careful to reveal only the wounded area of his hip. But as she ran more water to wash it, she realized it would do no good to leave him a quarter-dressed in bloody clothes; the risk of infection would increase, and the wet cloth would make a chill more likely. She tackled the cut first. Stitches wouldn't help the open graze, so she sprayed it liberally with antibiotic foam and taped bandages over it, trying to avoid taping too much of his hair down with them. She took a deep breath – unsure of why the prospect bothered her so much – and sliced through the rest of his clothing, laying him bare in the tub in a nest of bloody cloth.
She couldn't help the increase in her pulse, and despite her guilt, she let her eyes roam. There was nothing slight about him in the nude. His physique in clothing was an apparition, obviously a valuable weapon for the way it made his opponents underestimate him. He was all muscle, sinewy and lean but solid. "Everything about you is long, too, isn't it?" she breathed with a chuckle, and blushed so hard she felt the heat despite the sauna the room had become. She shook herself slightly and turned the water on again, careful not to let it soak the new bandages, using the one remaining clean cloth to gently wipe the blood from the rest of his skin. Even through it, she felt a thrill, and she told herself she was only being thorough, but the errand was far from unpleasant. Too soon, she had to admit to herself that there was no more blood to remove and she sat back on her heels, contemplating her next move.
"You're going to have to wake up," she said, putting her hand on his uninjured right shoulder. "But I should probably do something to lessen the shock." She carefully pulled his tattered clothing out from underneath him, piling it on the floor, and wrapped a clean towel around his waist. Remembering her own state of undress, she pulled her bathrobe on and tied it securely, looking down at him and wondering what on earth she could do to bring him around. Something from an old movie came back to her, and she rummaged through the cleaning supplies under the sink until she found a bottle of ammonia. She doused a tissue with it, her eyes watering, and carried it to the tub, waving it under Spike's nose.
For a moment, nothing happened. She was about to give up when she saw his left cheek twitch; he grimaced and began to cough, which was followed immediately by a half-groan, half-scream. She remembered his chest wound and gasped, pulling the tissue away and dropping to her knees. "Oh, god, I'm sorry Spike." She put a hand on his chest and lifted his head off the back of the tub. He half-opened his right eye, trained it on her, and choked out, "I'm dead."
"No, no, you're not. You had better not be." On instinct, she pulled his face to her chest, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.
"I'm dead," he repeated with a little more strength. "I saw you before I died. Why are you still here?"
"You're in my apartment, Spike. You're alive, I promise." She sat back and looked into his eyes; the left seemed blurry, and his face was still far too pale.
He blinked, blinked again, and tried to sit up, emitting another tortured groan.
"Shot me – in the heart." He dropped back, looking for the first time at his surroundings. "Heaven is a bathroom?"
She couldn't help but laugh. "Sure. My bathroom, no less. With me in it."
He turned his face toward her. "I'm in your bathtub." He looked down. "I'm wearing a towel." He turned back to her. "Heaven is your bathroom and we just took a bath."
His eyes closed as he lay back again. "I'm just sorry I missed it." He let out a long sigh, and she shook his shoulder gently.
"Spike, no. You need to stay awake, just for a few minutes. We need to get you out of here, somewhere more comfortable."
"'M comfortable," he mumbled.
She looked around in desperation. "HEY!" she shouted, but he barely stirred. She wanted to use the ammonia again, but couldn't bear the thought of him coughing. With a sigh, she slid her arm around his back, avoiding the bandages as best she could, and draped his right arm over her shoulder. She gathered her strength and clung to his arm as she tried to stand. He moaned, but the jostling seemed to bring him back, at least momentarily. "Don't," he whispered, "that hurts."
"Please get up, Spike. You only have to walk a few feet. You can lay down and sleep then." She spoke gently, her cheek against his bare chest, close to tears at the pain in his voice.
He turned his face slightly, bumping his chin on the top of her head, and groaned again. "God. Everything hurts."
"I know. Please come with me. Then you can sleep."
"I'll try," he whispered, and drew his knees up. She pulled on his arm again and this time he managed to rise with her, though she carried most of his weight. He got his right leg out of the tub without incident, but the left with the bullet graze didn't want to follow.
"Hold on to me, Spike," she coaxed, and bent to lift his leg at the knee so he could stand beside her. When he seemed steady, she cupped his face in her hand and turned him to face her. "Can we go twelve steps?" she asked, looking into his eyes, willing him to stay with her. He nodded.
She led him from the bathroom, through the narrow doorway to her bed, and eased him down onto the mattress. His hand slipped from her shoulder and hung over the side, but at least now she could manage; she used the blankets beneath him to pull his body into the center of the bed and wrapped them around him. He was either unconscious again or asleep - his expression had faded from anguish to nothing at all. She turned the side table lamp on, smoothed his hair back from his face, and went to clean up the mess.
When he felt the thud against his rib cage, Spike instinctively threw out a roundhouse kick, hoping to take down whoever had managed to sucker-punch him. It wasn't until a few seconds later, when he felt his shirt sticking to his side, that he realized he had been shot and not hit. Cold spread out across his chest from left to right, and down so that his left hip threatened to give out under his weight. He fell back into a sheltered crouch next to a huge oak desk, and scooted back and under it, breathing shallow, the room swimming in his left-eye view. Nausea crept up his throat as he tried to stay conscious.
Dully, he realized Vicious' boots were inches from his hiding place. "Vicious," he called out, as quietly as he could, "Get me out of here." He saw the swirl of a coat and the flash of the katana, and then Vicious knelt in front of him, eyes blazing.
Vicious assessed his wounded partner in one hasty look, and Spike was surprised to see relief on his face, because the words that formed on his lips were, "I will avenge you." He was out of Spike's range of vision before he could protest, and the room swirled into blackness.
His next conscious thought was that he was pushing through a strange, gray fog, for all appearances ordinary, except that it seemed to cling to his outstretched arms and face and keep his eyes from opening fully. He heard voices all around, unfamiliar, and thought for a sickening moment that he was back in the Tigers' torture chamber, that he couldn't open his eyes or see because they'd managed to take both of them this time. He couldn't hear with the blood rushing in his ears when he tried to move, so he lay still, taking in what he could.
"Did you see their faces?" a gleeful exclamation, from a thick-sounding man. "Just like at Henshai's, only this time they thought they had us set up!"
A snicker, from another direction. "I didn't see the girl who let Reno get away last time. Wonder if she got demoted to the kitchen." This voice was thin, almost whiny – young. Spike tried to match the voices to the faces he had seen when they entered the warehouse; he knew now that he was in the present, alive somehow and without his comrades. He thought he could hear four people in the hearty laughter that followed.
He drifted, not sure if the voices were moving away or if he was losing consciousness again, but finally he heard the clunk of a crossbolt as the warehouse door closed.
Summoning his martial arts concentration as best he could, he slowed his pounding heartbeat so that he could open his eyes without dizziness. To great relief, he discovered he still had both of them – his one-step-behind left, and his perfect right. He tried to reach his lighter with his left hand, but that side of his body was uncooperative, so he twisted his right arm around to the opposite pocket of his trenchcoat, and sparked the flint. In the dim glow, he thought for a moment he was lying in a pool of motor oil, but as his eyes adjusted and color resolved, he realized he was surrounded, for at least a two-foot radius all around his torso, with what was probably his own blood.
Bile rose in his throat and his vision swam again. Perspective stretched in and out like someone playing with the focus on an old 35MM camera. He heaved himself forward onto his right hand, dropping the lighter, retching, but the pain of the motion was so great that he stopped moving and breathing altogether. When the wave had passed, he sucked in a thin breath through his nose, trying not to hyperventilate, and struggled to stand, cradling his numb left arm across the open wound that seemed to lead directly to his heart.
Maybe they didn't hit it, he thought, maybe I'm the most heartless son of a bitch on Mars.
He had to let go of the limp arm to raise the crossbolt that held the door closed, and when he did, pain seared through his rib cage and shoulder, snapping him completely awake. He panted like an animal, could feel the cold as the wind rushed over the sheen of sweat on his face, over his clothes no doubt so wet from blood. When he took stock of his location, though, his step faltered, and he leaned against the doorway while he weighed the value of survival against the trek through no-man's-land into a neighborhood where he doubted anyone would open a door to him.
But he hadn't survived this wound so far just to lie down and die twenty feet from where it bled out, and so he began the walk. He tried to stay as straight on course as possible, to reduce the effort required to make progress. From a distance, he looked like he stood at an impossible angle, both arms folded over his bleeding torso, leaning forward and catching himself from falling at the last second by throwing a long, thin leg out in front. In this way, he eventually found himself at a wider street, and he looked up and around, turning right because that was the leg that seemed more likely to hold him.
The light from the shop windows made his head pound, and the pounding made him nauseous again. He bumped into a trash can, looked up, and saw loaves of bread on the other side of the glass. Something about bread... Something about a bakery. And this place. And then he realized that he was only a few feet from Julia's stairway. Julia hadn't gone with them tonight. Julia might be at home.
His strength flagged as he contemplated a stopping place. One foot in front of the other, he thought while the fog tunneled around his left-side peripheral vision. Keep moving. And then a flash of light distracted him, and he felt air rush past as he toppled forward onto the sidewalk. The light had come from a doorway – Julia's doorway – and there, like Charon waiting to take him across the river, was Julia, with her coat on and her handbag clutched. He met her eyes for a brief second, saw the shock register there, and then let the blackness take him.
***
Julia dropped her book with a half-sigh and picked up the buzzing comm. It was almost midnight; not an unusual time for Vicious to call, but also past the hour when she wanted to be summoned out of her evening routine. One look at his face had her gathering her effects, though – he had told her he was meeting with the Van tonight, but his hair was matted with blood and a fresh bandage covered the bridge of his nose. "What the hell happened?" she demanded as she pulled on a shoe.
From Vicious' end, the images on the comm. were a blur of her apartment at strange angles, making him dizzy. "Julia! Sit down," he barked in a tight voice. She did so before she realized it.
"Better," he nodded. "We got set up."
She furrowed her brow at the comm. "The Van? What happened?" she asked again.
He hesitated a moment before replying. "We didn't meet with the Van tonight. We went to make sure a sale with Rocket went through as planned. Spike found out he's been skipping shipments."
"Why didn't you call me?" It had been almost three weeks since that strange night with him and then Spike; she had thought it all behind them.
"We had everyone we needed at the tower," he said dismissively. "I didn't really think we needed heavy artillery. We've been breaking Rocket down ever since this assignment started."
"But he set us up? Who went with you? Who knew about it?"
"Just me," Vicious sighed. "I took Spike and Lin, and Marcus. Last minute," he repeated.
"What do we do now?" She waited for the meet location, the list of artillery to bring with her, which car she was to drive.
Vicious dropped his eyes from the comm. She realized with a sick jolt that this wasn't just a political issue.
"Vicious, what happened?"
"The first thing we do is bury Spike."
The room swam. Noise from the street below grew louder; the headlights of a passing car tracked across the ceiling. The comm. fell to her lap, forgotten, and images flashed through her mind – a pool hall, Vicious and Spike hustling the patrons; Vicious and Spike sitting in the overstuffed armchairs of the Dragon library, dirty boots on the antique coffee tables; Spike's face shifting from pain to anger as a bullet hit his shoulder and spun him around at Henshai's; the look of helpless confusion he gave her when she broke down in front of him later that night.
"No," she said to the yellow walls. "No."
Vicious broke the reverie. "Julia, I need you. I need your help." If she had been in any other frame of mind, it would have sounded foreign, but she just looked at the comm. in her hand, nodded, and shut it off.
She drew herself up off the couch, packed the comm. and her gun in her purse, and pulled her coat on before turning off the light.
The stairs stretched out for a million miles in front of her, and she gripped the railing as she descended. Finally at the bottom, she leaned against the door handle for a moment, willing the nausea and the tears to subside before she went out to face the night. The first thing she heard as she pushed it open was the baker, Holling, asking "Are you all right?" She turned in his direction, but he wasn't looking at her. He was looking down at the sidewalk, and she followed his gaze to the fallen form in front of her – long limbs splayed beneath a black trenchcoat, a shock of green- black hair, blood and rust-brown eyes. They met her confused expression before the face – Spike's face, she knew, but could not process – dropped to the sidewalk and was still.
She wasn't sure how many seconds passed while she stood there, holding the door open, trying to piece together the scene in front of her. It was Holling who got to him first, shaking his shoulder, checking his pulse, and then looking up at Julia. "Don't you know this guy?"
She nodded and shook herself, dropped to her knees, and gently lifted one of his shoulders to turn him over. He seemed impossibly heavy, but he was still breathing – she could hear it, a horrible, wet, rattling sound. She gasped at the blood that had stained every inch of his gray dress shirt; his coat was sticky with it and she fingered a hole in the back where a bullet had obviously blown through. She had no idea how he was alive – now she had spotted the entrance wound, on the left side, where his heart would be. Looking up at Holling, who was clearly out of his element, she said, "We have to get him off the street."
"I'm sorry, Julia, but he can't come in my shop."
She shook her head. "No, I'll take him to my apartment."
"He needs to go to a hospital!" Holling was pulling his comm. out of his apron pocket, but she shook her head again.
"I can help him. And if I can't, he doesn't have time to make it to the hospital, either. Please help me?"
Holling weighed his options, saw that he already had blood on his pants where he'd knelt beside Spike, and issued a curt grunt. He propped the shop door open with an elbow, called out, "Back in a minute!" and turned back to her. "You think we should move him?"
Julia looked down the sidewalk at the unmistakable trail of blood. "He got here by himself, so I doubt moving him now would do any new damage." She took off her coat and laid it on the ground. "Let's get him onto this, and then we can use it like a litter to carry him." She didn't bother explaining that she hoped to prevent the blood trail continuing straight to her apartment, but she did tell Holling sharply, "If anyone comes in and asks, you saw him get into a car. A gray sedan. You didn't see the drivers. All right?"
He glared at her. "What are you into, Julia?"
"No time," she replied.
The truth was that they had plenty of time, as they struggled to get Spike up the three flights of stairs to her apartment. They spent it in silence all the same; Julia was baffled at how a man who was barely visible sideways could weigh what felt like at least two hundred pounds. He did not stir during the transport, but kept up with the ragged shallow breathing, and she dared to let herself hope when they reached her door. She discovered she had forgotten to lock it when she left – all the better, since they would have had to put Spike down for her to find her keys. She shouldered the light switch and looked around the room, wondering where on earth to put him.
"Bathtub," Holling grunted. "I don't think I can hold him up much longer. He'll ruin your floor anywhere else."
She nodded and led the way to the bathroom, her fingers going numb from clinging to the fabric of her coat. They levered Spike into the clawfoot tub where he sprawled, head over the rounded back lip, arms akimbo, feet on either side of the water faucet. It would have been comical, had the position not also afforded her a very clear view of his blood-soaked clothing, ashen face, and that awful high-caliber hole through his shirt, right over the heart.
She stood, found a towel, and handed it to Holling. "Thank you. I owe you. Remember, gray sedan, didn't see the drivers. You didn't notice until they pulled over and stopped."
He glared at her. "Girl like you shouldn't associate with punks and gangs," he muttered. "Gotta go change my pants."
If he only knew... a girl like her could hold her own with the punks and the gangs. She pulled a fistful of cash from her pocket and peeled off a few thousand. "For some new pants," she replied. "Thank you again."
He shook his head and let himself out, grumbling under his breath.
Julia stared down at Spike for a few moments, taking in the bloody trail a workboot sole had left across his cheek, the deep split in his chin from a hard punch, the angry red lump on his temple. He hadn't just been shot – he had been battered. On autopilot, she stood and went to collect a pitcher, towels, and medical supplies. Everywhere she went, she could hear the rattle of his breath, and in a strange way it comforted her. The pace of it had evened out. She returned and started the faucet, watching the blood spreading out in tendrils through the water in the bottom of the tub. When it was warm, she filled the pitcher and lifted it to rinse his chin and neck.
She laid a hand on the side of his face and was shocked at how cold he felt. If she undressed him in the open air, he'd be freezing, she realized, and turned on the heat register as she closed the door. While she waited for the temperature to rise, she struggled with his necktie, but it was soaked with drying blood, and she had to cut it away with the surgical scissors. She dropped it on the floor and went to work unbuttoning his shirt; that, too, proved near impossible and she finally pulled her throwing knife from its sheath on her thigh and slashed the cloth away.
"That's why you're alive," she whispered with simultaneous relief and horror. His shirt must have been twisted across his chest when the bullet hit, because the actual wound was a gaping hole about an inch into his rib cage. She could see bone at the edge of the hole, but despite his rattling breath, the blood had congealed without bubbling. The bullet had missed his lung as well.
Satisfied that she could deal with it, as long as there were not worse surprises in store, she set to work getting him undressed to clean the wound properly. She pulled his collar back and understood why he was so heavy – the high collared shirts and jackets he always wore camouflaged thickly muscled shoulders that sloped the full width across. "You're tougher than you look," she told the unconscious man. "Of course, I knew that anyway, but now I know your secret." With the throwing knife, she cut the length of each shirt and jacket sleeve from collar to cuff, peeling back the bloody cloth and revealing the rest of his torso. Now she could see more damage: the knife wound in his left shoulder where the stitches had barely healed, defensive bruises and cuts on his forearms where he'd blocked other blows. The wiry, sculpted muscle of those arms surprised her as his shoulders had – in a bomber jacket, he looked like a skinny kid, but he obviously devoted tremendous attention to his physique. Strange, because other than his flirtation with her when they first met, she couldn't remember Spike giving much more than the time of day to any woman he'd been around in her company. "You take this whole tough guy thing a lot more seriously than you let on," she said.
He mumbled something and a blush spread across her face at the fact that she'd been staring at him instead of working on his wounds, but he didn't seem conscious. It had certainly gotten hot enough that he was in no danger of a chill. She looked at her dress, stuck to her chest and arms with blood and sweat, and gave him another long look to see if he would stir before peeling down to her underwear and dropping the ruined clothing with his own on the floor.
She found a rhythm in washing him, with the water thundering at the drain. After a dozen pitchers, it had begun to run only slightly pink unless it came into contact with the hole in his chest, so she turned it off and set to work with the antibiotic foam. She was mystified at what to do with the damage to the bone, but from what she could see his rib had chipped rather than shattered, at least in front. She gagged as she tweezed the stray pieces out. "I thought stitches were bad," she told him, keeping conversation so she wouldn't have to think about the task too hard. Those were easy after the bone-fishing project, and for the second time she felt grateful he was unconscious, this time because he wouldn't complain as she stitched him up.
"I think we're almost done," she told him when his shoulder and chest were sewn together and his face bandaged. "One more mending project." She pushed his right arm down, trying to leverage his weight so she could get him turned on his side in the tub. But his legs were too long and had to be moved first; she could see that he had begun bleeding again while she jostled him. For the first time it dawned on her that she might have a difficult time getting him out of the tub when she was finished. And in turn, she realized for the first time that she had not showed up to meet Vicious. She fumbled in the pocket of her jacket where it hung over the edge of the tub and pulled out the comm. It was mostly dry, though blood had seeped through the lining onto the screen. She dialed Vicious and hastily pulled a towel around her shoulders, realizing what he'd see when he picked up.
He did so on the first buzz, his face flat and calm. "You're alive. Good."
"Vicious, I'm sorry. But Spike is alive. He's here. He showed up here, right as I was leaving. I was so worried about – "
"He came to your apartment?" he interrupted. "He could have gotten you killed, he could have led someone there!"
"But he's alive," she argued. "He's alive and I think he'll make it."
She saw confusion cross Vicious' features so briefly she might have imagined it. "Which is good news. But Julia, he's barely three blocks from where the ambush happened. What were you thinking taking him into your apartment?"
She glared at the screen. "I didn't know about your little adventure, remember? I didn't know it was practically in my back yard. Why doesn't it matter to you that Spike is alive?"
He spoke to someone off-screen in a tone that didn't carry over the comm. "Yes," he said, turning back to her, "Of course I am glad he is alive. But I am upset that he could have taken you down with him if he were not."
"I need help moving him. He's in the bathtub. He can't stay there." She rushed through the words, nervous at Vicious' reaction and hoping that a task to do would make him drop the line of conversation.
But he was intent on the details of her situation. "Who saw you take him upstairs?"
"Holling helped me. It was past midnight; I don't think anyone saw us. I told him to say he saw Spike get into a gray sedan if anyone happened to ask."
"Good. That's a start. But I cannot come back there tonight," he went on, almost to himself. "If you managed to get Spike upstairs without being seen, it would be foolish for me to draw attention to you again."
"What am I supposed to do?" she asked, desperation creeping into her tone. "Look at him." She aimed the comm. at his body in the bathtub, slumped to one side, the angry wound in his back still exposed.
"Wait until he wakes up and let him get up himself," was the best Vicious could offer. "I'll contact you again in the morning."
She stared helplessly at the comm. Vicious cut off the question she was formulating. "I'm pretty sure he was shot in the leg as well," he said. "Would have been easy to miss in all that blood." And the comm. went dark, leaving her alone again with an unconscious man in her bathroom.
She supposed Vicious had a point. She'd have to try and revive Spike; he had walked three blocks to find her, so there was a good chance he'd come around eventually. The news of a bullet in his leg worried her, although it explained why so much blood had appeared when she tried to turn him over. She worked quickly to clean and stitch the wound on his back, gagging her way through another fishing expedition with the bits of back rib that had been shattered when the bullet punched through between them. "At least there's no bullet to retrieve," she said, bringing him up to speed. He had nothing to say. "Lucky for you they didn't bother using their crosstips on you guys."
With the through-and-through hole patched, she explored his legs, finally finding the injury Vicious had mentioned. It was little more than a graze, an angry and bleeding welt but not an entry wound. It would make moving painful, she knew from experience – right at the point where his hip bent, it would not heal unless immobile and it would protest mightily if not. She unbuckled his belt and managed to pull it free, and then contemplated destroying the rest of his clothing with the knife. What would he do if he were awake? Would he even allow her to work on this injury? She shook his right shoulder gently, the towel-and-underwear getup forgotten. "Spike?" He didn't stir. "Spike!" she shouted, the name echoing back to her off the tile of the shower. She lifted his right eyelid and his iris immediately contracted against the light, staring straight ahead.
She was about to berate him for playing possum when she looked more closely at the eye. She'd always known it was a slight mismatch for his other one, but now she saw that the eyeball was perfectly white, the iris patterns too perfect, the circle around his pupil too symmetrical. It was a cybernetic eye, a very well made and obviously functional one. It must have responded to the light in the room even though his brain took no notice.
To test her theory, she let it close and lifted the left lid. The iris of this one was barely visible, rolled upward. She felt a surge of guilt for doubting him and laid a palm against his cheek, whispering, "Forgive me. I think I'm about to violate you."
Removing his boots proved a challenge. They didn't seem to have any zippers or fasteners, and hugged his feet like permanent appendages. Eventually she managed to get one off and fell back, not expecting its weight. They looked so strangely feminine, with their round toe, but she saw now that the toes were solid metal, the inside of the boot lined in sherpa fleece for comfort. No wonder a kick from him did so much damage.
When the other boot was off, the throwing knife slid through his pant leg as though it were paper. She parted the two sides of the cloth and cut his boxers, careful to reveal only the wounded area of his hip. But as she ran more water to wash it, she realized it would do no good to leave him a quarter-dressed in bloody clothes; the risk of infection would increase, and the wet cloth would make a chill more likely. She tackled the cut first. Stitches wouldn't help the open graze, so she sprayed it liberally with antibiotic foam and taped bandages over it, trying to avoid taping too much of his hair down with them. She took a deep breath – unsure of why the prospect bothered her so much – and sliced through the rest of his clothing, laying him bare in the tub in a nest of bloody cloth.
She couldn't help the increase in her pulse, and despite her guilt, she let her eyes roam. There was nothing slight about him in the nude. His physique in clothing was an apparition, obviously a valuable weapon for the way it made his opponents underestimate him. He was all muscle, sinewy and lean but solid. "Everything about you is long, too, isn't it?" she breathed with a chuckle, and blushed so hard she felt the heat despite the sauna the room had become. She shook herself slightly and turned the water on again, careful not to let it soak the new bandages, using the one remaining clean cloth to gently wipe the blood from the rest of his skin. Even through it, she felt a thrill, and she told herself she was only being thorough, but the errand was far from unpleasant. Too soon, she had to admit to herself that there was no more blood to remove and she sat back on her heels, contemplating her next move.
"You're going to have to wake up," she said, putting her hand on his uninjured right shoulder. "But I should probably do something to lessen the shock." She carefully pulled his tattered clothing out from underneath him, piling it on the floor, and wrapped a clean towel around his waist. Remembering her own state of undress, she pulled her bathrobe on and tied it securely, looking down at him and wondering what on earth she could do to bring him around. Something from an old movie came back to her, and she rummaged through the cleaning supplies under the sink until she found a bottle of ammonia. She doused a tissue with it, her eyes watering, and carried it to the tub, waving it under Spike's nose.
For a moment, nothing happened. She was about to give up when she saw his left cheek twitch; he grimaced and began to cough, which was followed immediately by a half-groan, half-scream. She remembered his chest wound and gasped, pulling the tissue away and dropping to her knees. "Oh, god, I'm sorry Spike." She put a hand on his chest and lifted his head off the back of the tub. He half-opened his right eye, trained it on her, and choked out, "I'm dead."
"No, no, you're not. You had better not be." On instinct, she pulled his face to her chest, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.
"I'm dead," he repeated with a little more strength. "I saw you before I died. Why are you still here?"
"You're in my apartment, Spike. You're alive, I promise." She sat back and looked into his eyes; the left seemed blurry, and his face was still far too pale.
He blinked, blinked again, and tried to sit up, emitting another tortured groan.
"Shot me – in the heart." He dropped back, looking for the first time at his surroundings. "Heaven is a bathroom?"
She couldn't help but laugh. "Sure. My bathroom, no less. With me in it."
He turned his face toward her. "I'm in your bathtub." He looked down. "I'm wearing a towel." He turned back to her. "Heaven is your bathroom and we just took a bath."
His eyes closed as he lay back again. "I'm just sorry I missed it." He let out a long sigh, and she shook his shoulder gently.
"Spike, no. You need to stay awake, just for a few minutes. We need to get you out of here, somewhere more comfortable."
"'M comfortable," he mumbled.
She looked around in desperation. "HEY!" she shouted, but he barely stirred. She wanted to use the ammonia again, but couldn't bear the thought of him coughing. With a sigh, she slid her arm around his back, avoiding the bandages as best she could, and draped his right arm over her shoulder. She gathered her strength and clung to his arm as she tried to stand. He moaned, but the jostling seemed to bring him back, at least momentarily. "Don't," he whispered, "that hurts."
"Please get up, Spike. You only have to walk a few feet. You can lay down and sleep then." She spoke gently, her cheek against his bare chest, close to tears at the pain in his voice.
He turned his face slightly, bumping his chin on the top of her head, and groaned again. "God. Everything hurts."
"I know. Please come with me. Then you can sleep."
"I'll try," he whispered, and drew his knees up. She pulled on his arm again and this time he managed to rise with her, though she carried most of his weight. He got his right leg out of the tub without incident, but the left with the bullet graze didn't want to follow.
"Hold on to me, Spike," she coaxed, and bent to lift his leg at the knee so he could stand beside her. When he seemed steady, she cupped his face in her hand and turned him to face her. "Can we go twelve steps?" she asked, looking into his eyes, willing him to stay with her. He nodded.
She led him from the bathroom, through the narrow doorway to her bed, and eased him down onto the mattress. His hand slipped from her shoulder and hung over the side, but at least now she could manage; she used the blankets beneath him to pull his body into the center of the bed and wrapped them around him. He was either unconscious again or asleep - his expression had faded from anguish to nothing at all. She turned the side table lamp on, smoothed his hair back from his face, and went to clean up the mess.