Warnings: None

Queen of This Backwater Moon

Chapter 04:

"Rock Salt or Shells"

His chest stung like it had been attacked by a pack of angry bees, but when Jet swam from the depths of unconsciousness to blink in the harsh glare of an overhead fluorescent light, he was too surprised to complain—surprised he wasn't dead, mostly, though for a minute he couldn't remember why he felt so shocked to be alive. Thoughts of Where am I? and Why's that light so damn bright? made thinking tough, and made remembering where he was too difficult to fathom. He focused instead on the feeling of a mattress under his back, on the sensation of a sheet ratling over his arms (soft and cool on his bio right, distant and vague on his mechanical left). He tried to move both arms and only succeeded in lifting the right, palm cupping his throbbing forehead as he tried in vain to sit up.

Two strong hands pressed against his shoulders before he could move an inch, gently forcing him back onto the mattress.

He opened his eyes (when had he shut them?) and saw her.

"I wouldn't," she murmured. "You're healing."

Jet didn't move.

She stood near his shoulder, the woman, at the side of the long, low bed in the middle of a small room with tile floors and a tiled ceiling, barren and white and austere. Her dusky skin, the dark gold hair curling around her shoulders, it stood out against the featureless room like—metaphors escaped him. Jet's head swam far too much for metaphors, and besides. He was too busy trying to remember where he'd seen her before, and where she might've gotten her throaty accent. He watched from beneath his lids as she reached for his wrist and pressed two long fingers to his pulse, head bowed and eyes focused as she timed his thudding heart. He knew her from somewhere, he thought, but his memory turned to water in his hands. His eyes arrested on her hands, tracing the line of them down to her fingers, to his own wrist, up his arm and to his own torso—

The sheet covering him had slipped when he tried to sit up.

White bandages covered the broad expanse of his chest. Pips of cherry-colored blood dotted the fabric like—metaphors. Jet didn't have the head for metaphors—but even so.

At the sight of the blood, Jet remembered everything.

He couldn't quite keep the offense from his voice when he said, "You shot me."

The woman's eyes flickered from his arm to his face. Those eyes of hers were gray, he noticed—a metallic silver against her bronzed skin, unexpected and cool. Only now they were screwed up in obvious regret, bright above teeth catching on her lower lip. Like a kid caught with their hand in a cookie jar, almost, though she was too old to be a kid. Maybe Spike's age. Maybe a little older.

"I shot you with rock salt and a very wide choke, if it helps," she offered.

"It doesn't," Jet said (but it did, because those details meant she hadn't meant to kill him, and that counted for something on this barren moon). He scanned her again. Couldn't help but smile, and his voice came out sleepy and teasing when he said, "You're wearing clothes this time."

And indeed she was: breeches and a buttoned shirt, simple and plain. A far cry from the bathrobe in which she'd greeted him—but at his observation she merely snorted. She dropped his wrist. "Are you complaining?" she asked.

"Would you be upset if I was?"

She snorted again, but a smile threatened the corner of her mouth. Pretty, Jet thought, with those full lips and lean features of hers, eyes large and bright in her strong face—though any admiration he might've had for her face dulled somewhat at the sight of the shotgun leaning against the wall behind her, well within her arm's reach.

Still loaded with rock salt, he wondered? Or did it contain more lethal shells these days?

She seemed kindly enough, he thought, muggy brain noting that even if she'd shot him, she'd been kind enough to patch him up afterwards. That was nice. She was a nice lady. And she hadn't meant to kill him. But who was she? Was she defending her turf, or what? Not many were supposed to live here. So who…?

His brain felt… fuzzy. Body, leaden. Mouth, desert dry. She probably had him on painkillers. Was she a doctor? He hoped so. Otherwise…

He moved, left arm dragging nearly numb across the table with a metallic scrape, and the sheet slipped off of him entirely. He tried to catch the sheet on reflex. He flopped, trying to grab it with his right, only to land on his side in a heap.

Something crunched.

Jet looked down.

Two parts of the outer shell of his prosthetic limb, the bits just above his forearm and atop his bicep—they had been 'popped,' so to speak. Not broken or ruptured or knocked askew, but neatly popped out of place and moved aside, the way the technician moved them when calibrating the internal mechanisms that connected man to machine, nerves to network, and flesh to filament. Light reflected on the shining innards of Jet's adopted body, and while a look at his own inner workings would normally set his skin to crawling (there was a reason he only rarely visited a technician for a tune-up, though he'd never admit it) it wasn't the glide and pull of mechanical muscle that made his stomach churn.

The wires—the dozen, two dozen, three dozen wires all alight with shimmering electronic radiance snaking over the side of the bed, diving under his arm's metal carapace and into the machinery below, hooking into him like snakes—those were what sent bile into his mouth in an acrid wave, and all at once he became painfully aware even through his hazy state of mind the inert feeling of his arm, his inability to so much as flex his prosthetic fingers.

"I'm sorry," said the woman from behind him. Her voice came close to his ear, her breath so vivid on his skin it was disorienting. "I should have asked first. But I am checking to make sure—"

It didn't matter what she was checking, Jet thought through the fog in his head. He wanted the wires out of himself and he wanted out of wherever here was and he wanted to know where Spike was and no amount of meds in his system could silence the clarity of any of those desires. He reached for the wires invading him with his right hand. "I need to get out of here."

She rounded the bed in seconds, hands on his shoulders, shoving him back down. "No," she said, command as firm as her iron grip (one that Jet, though willful, was too maddeningly weak to resist). "You'll hurt yourself." And her voice softened along with her silver eyes. "And you have nowhere to go, anyway."

"What does that mean?" he said. He gripped the front of her shirt like she was no more than a common thug, and when her eyes widened he lurched toward her with a growl of, "Tell me what that means, dammit!"

She looked at the ceiling and barked, "Mother!"

For a minute Jet thought she might be calling for help, that maybe they weren't alone and she'd yelled for backup when he scared her—but no one came running. Instead one of the many white panels on the wall over her shoulder sparked, lighting up from behind with a burst of static. It was a screen, not a wall at all, and after a minute the static turned brown and grey. Jet thought the static had just changed color, at first, but then from somewhere above his head a speaker kicked on, filling the room with a keening howl—of wind. Wind and dirt and sand ricocheting off of stone.

"The sand here can cut," the woman said. Her hands eased around Jet's, thumbs pressing against his palm until his fingers relaxed. Her voice soothed, a murmur like a lapping tide, like the waves of Ganymede on a calm night, lulling him to sleep as a boy. She lowered his hand to the bed and said, "It's best to lie low until it passes."

The sandstorm, he remembered. He'd seen that storm coming. It had looked huge. Probably was still raging, depending on how long he'd slept. And he'd been shot, so he'd probably slept a long time…

Jet kept his eyes on the screen as she covered him again with the sheet, hiding his splayed-open prosthetic from view, arranging his other arm at his side. Eventually the speakers quieted and soon the screen turned white, concealing itself once more as a generic bit of tiled wall. His heart (when had it started racing?) calmed over the course of moments until he lay stoic and relaxed. The woman walked away, toward a metal tray held aloft on a metal stand. She fiddled with something there, back turned to him—shotgun well within her reach again.

Even in his addled state, Jet knew better than to try to get a jump on her. Best take a minute to regroup, sleepy though he suddenly was. So. Where did he think they…?

"Are we underground?" he said.

For a second he didn't understand why he'd said it, but when the woman looked at him with surprise, he knew he'd spoken true—his subconscious had put it together first, was all. He couldn't hear the storm now that the screen had turned off, which meant they were too deep or behind walls too thick to hear the storm. And since he hadn't seen any buildings when he landed…

"Yes," the woman said. Lines between her brows said she didn't quite appreciate his razor intuition. "We're quite deep."

Jet would've been proud if he didn't feel so tired. So, they were in a hidden facility? Made sense, he supposed. But… "How did you get me down here?" he asked.

She turned back to her metal tray. She spoke her reply over her shoulder, absent and offhand. "I carried you," she said.

Jet's brow raised. "Little thing like you?"

She laughed through her nose, still not turning. "Not so little," she said, though with good humor. One arm raised, flexing, and through her close-fit shirt Jet saw a ripple of lithe muscle. "What is your name?"

The question caught him off guard, though only for a moment. "Not in the habit of giving it out to strange women in bathrobes," he said, turning up his nose.

"Not wearing a bathrobe anymore," she reminded him. One silver eye regarded him over her shoulder. "I'm Reina."

That eye was like a sniper's scope, intense and careful and dispassionate. She watched him closely when she said her name, as if expecting him to react to it—the behavior of a person with a name of importance, or at least a name of notoriety. Typical behavior of bountyheads and wanted crooks, in point of fact, even if Reina didn't seem like a crook at first glance. He'd seen too many like that not to know the look, even with his head like a foggy Ganymede dawn. Jet had to wonder if this Reina had a bounty of her own with nerves on such edge—especially when her hand twitched just the slightest inch toward the shotgun against the wall.

Rock salt or shells? Jet wondered. Rock salt or shells?

But he had never heard Reina's name before, much less seen a bounty out for her pretty head, and he had no intention of giving her call to use that gun again no matter the contents of its chamber.

"Name's Jet," Jet said. "It's nice to meet you."

She held their gaze for a moment or so—and whatever she read in his face seemed to reassure her. She smiled back, full lips curling, eyes crinkling at the corners just so. She curled a lock of hair behind her ear and tipped her face to the ceiling, clearing her throat with a light cough.

"It is nice to meet you, Jet," she said. "Mother?"

Jet frowned—but before he could wonder what she was doing, calling for her mama again, something in the ceiling clicked and whirred. A voice, light and airy, said: "Si?"

"Agua, por favor," Reina said (a Spanish accent, he finally put together). She glanced at Jet. Hesitated. Added: "And initiate English language."

Another click. Then: "Yes, dear."

Jet started to ask what the heck that had been about, but before he could he got an answer—part of one, anyhow. Another of the tiled wall panels, one just to Reina's right and about shoulder height, slid upward, revealing a recessed nook about the size of a computer case. A cup dropped from a slot at the top, and then there came a whirring noise and a small streamer of water dropped into the cup with a thin splash. Jet watched it for a second before swallowing.

"Mother?" he managed.

"An AI. Nothing to worry about." Reina grabbed the cup when it filled and carried it to him, snagging something off the metal tray on her way to Jet's side. Two white pills stood out against the bronze of her palm. "Here. Drink," she said.

He eyed the pills, not to mention the water, with some trepidation—but at her insistence (and at the stinging pain in his chest) he took them and drank the cup. Almost instantly a wave of fatigue swept over him. Powerful drugs, whatever they were. Maybe it hadn't been a good idea to…

He yawned.

… what had he been worrying about, again?

"What did you give me?" he muttered, grabbing the sheet and pulling it beneath his chin.

"Painkillers." She grimaced, apology written all over her face—and Jet thought she couldn't be so bad, after all, if she was sorry for whatever it was she'd done. He couldn't remember all that well. "Rock salt stings, so I thought…"

"You are a nice lady," he said.

Another grimace, though afterward she smiled. "Don't give me too much credit. I did shoot you." She frowned and pressed the back of her hand to his forehead, then to his cheek. Jet liked the cool feeling of her skin, and the softness of her hair when it fell over his bare shoulder. Like a mother checking on you when you're sick. Or when Alisa brought him soup when he had the flu. As Jet's eyes closed, a contented hum in his throat, Reina fretted, "And I might have given you too much medicine. You are a large man, and I am no doctor."

"Y'know." He blinked sleepily, her face winking in and out of view. Damn, those pills worked fast. "If I didn't know any better, I'd accuse you of trying to take advantage of me."

She stared at him, clearly taken aback... but her mouth quirked.

"Tell me, Jet. Do you always flirt with women who shoot you?" she asked, amused.

"Only the pretty ones." He yawned again. "And only after they put down the gun."

He thought maybe she wouldn't like that, but he was wrong, because she laughed low and throaty and rich, and then a light flicked off. "Wise man," she said, and her hand touched his face again. "There's water on your bedside. Now, rest. I have some things to see to. Mother estimates we'll be here through the night yet."

Rest did sound nice—but Jet's instincts stirred. He opened his eyes.

"Reina," he said.

He had a view of a doorway (had he noticed it before?) from his spot on his bed. Reina stood in it, lit from behind by light the color of wheat. It turned her hair the same color, her face dark and inscrutable, but she paused with her hand on the doorframe at the sound of her name.

"What is this place?" Jet asked.

Reina didn't move. She didn't speak. But through his lidded eyes Jet saw her chest swell and fall with a single deep breath, followed by another that did not release. Then, like a wind through dense trees, her murmur moved through the gloom.

"This place is a secret," Reina told him. "Sleep now, Jet."

He was dreaming before she could shut the door.

NOTES

Write Super Doped-Up Jet was surprisingly fun. He's kind of a goofball when he's caught off guard, and I love him for that. He's such a nice blend of the hardboiled detective mixed with the softer, bonsai-loving Space Dad we know from the shoe, and I look forward to working with him more closely, really honing that mix of goof with honed bite.

And Reina is fun. Can't wait for her to show more of her personality. She's sweet, but guarded, and she's going to be a blast.

MANY THANKS to Luck Kazajian and deamachi-mochi for their reviews! Absolutely made my day when you commented. I'm loving writing this fic and it means the world that you're along for the ride.