“Mzzzph?” Ugh. My mouth tasted like cotton and dust. It should have been blood. My return to consciousness should have been accompanied by sirens and lights. The rather level silence was disconcerting. Maybe this would teach me to mind my responsibilities? Probably not.

Nothing moved, not even my eyelids. I could hear ...nothing. Maybe a door? I laid perfectly still, not hard since I couldn’t feel my body.

“Keep your eyes closed.”

Closed? I suppose I should have been happy I still had them. I could hear scissors, but ...getting farther off, like I was falling backwards down a tunnel. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I won’t climb back out again. I have a very bad feeling that life has just gotten a lot worse.

My situation was better when I woke up, I could see. A hospital? Yep, white walls, white sheets, smells like new paint and spilled alcohol. But the straps were new, I didn’t ever recall being tied down before. I had no idea where I was. The whole room was sterile with a big one-way observation mirror and a couple of machines that seemed to have the sole purpose of beeping when I breathed hard. It was also rather odd that I couldn’t see anything of me. I assumed the lumps under the pristine sheet were my legs, but they seemed awfully long. Of course, my vision was a little fuzzy still. That was also strange, I have always been able to clear my sight with a few blinks. A advantage to being genetically superior to the masses, flawless vision. It wouldn’t do for a daughter of the Council to be less than perfect ...physically. I couldn’t help the nasty grin that spread over my face, it was just too funny. I still had a few antics to pull before I was the most notorious Council brat in history, but I was off to a better start than most of my class.

I woke up again to the irritating rambling of a news broadcast. My lovely little prison cell, now had a lovely little vid screen. For my viewing entertainment? I sincerely doubted it. I amused myself by pulling at my restraints, all hidden under sheets so I could not see so much as an inch of skin. I occupied myself so until something on the vid caught my attention.

“Council member Robert Saladin is in mourning today after the tragic loss of his youngest child, Raquell Saladin. Raquell, a piano prodigy who was expected to eventually attend the prestigious Clovis University in a military related major, suffered severe injury in a glider crash late Thursday evening. Further detail is unavailable at this time.”

The reporter moved on to cover a scientific breakthrough in something or other, I didn’t hear it. My mind was still viewing the picture that had been on the screen. A girl appearing about twelve, with pale skin and clear, dark lashed, gray eyes, crowned with a wealth of rich brown hair. The clip did nothing to show vivid violet highlights the light exposed, the only visible sign of genetic manipulation. Everyone in the higher echelons of authority utilized genetic engineering, most just refused to allow any sign of it to phenotypically show in themselves or their offspring. Usually children who exhibited such errors were either abandoned to an orphanage, or aborted. I was a rare exception. I refused to believe either of my progenitors had such a thing as parental fondness, so I decided it was a health decision on my mothers part. A slightly atypical hair color was acceptable, or so I assume the statistical analyst told her that week. I had reveled in that hair as long as I had been alive. Long, think, warm, and most importantly, unique.

I wasn’t dead. I couldn’t be. Death is the last stop. There is nothing beyond. I didn’t agree with much Council hype, but on that topic I had no dissension. Even allowing that I might be wrong, surely death wasn’t eternity as a lab rat. Surely.

The screen went dark and the door slid open. A face I recognized. I focused on making my voice (my voice?) as icy as possible. “General, so good to see you. I trust I shall be able to return home directly? I saw a most distressing news broadcast and would like to assure the local networks, as soon as my parents deem acceptable of course, of my continued existence.” A bit more frantic sounding than I would have liked, but after all, I had just survived a severe accident. Surely I was allowed to sound a bit frazzled. He stared at my blankly for a few moments, as I watched something frost in his eyes.

“Blood. It really is her isn’t it? You can’t possibly have coached some kid into such a perfect mimicry of inflection in the time you’ve had.” He apparently received some sort of reply because he nodded and walked out without speaking to me. I was truly beginning to fear. I defied my parents at every opportunity, but had always been careful not to do it in such a way that they would be forced to seriously punish me. Nothing that would cause them real trouble or damage their image. Or at least nothing that I could recall. The age of majority was thirty in all lands over which the Council had dominion, which was pretty much everywhere. I looked about fourteen, or I had, and while I was actually almost twenty two, thanks to my rather warped genetics, I was very, very careful to be the dutiful daughter when it mattered. I still had at least eight years to the earliest time I would have even marginal autonomy. Not that autonomy would provide me protection from their wrath, but at least I would have the freedom of movement that might let me slip into the cracks and out from under their thumb.

What could I have done? I remembered the crash: I’d been angry, driving recklessly. Over some stupid quarrel. I had to attend a meeting I didn’t want to, I don’t even recall what petty bureaucrat I was supposed to be on show for. I remember the Heavy, a huge monster of a Lift that I didn’t see until it was to late. Funny, that the last thing that went through my mind was my brothers warning not to fly with the auto off, “it’s too dangerous.” I was starting to have a very, very bad feeling about my situation. I was tied down in a unknown location, with unknown injuries, and the media proclaiming me dead. In addition to which my fathers pet general had not shown me the least respect due a Council members daughter, had not addressed me by name, had not addressed me at all. My situation had all my long ingrained survival instincts screaming. Apparently the powers that be decided I had enough excitement for the hour, because the next thing I knew was darkness.

I woke up for the third time and was delighted, I was unbound! Then I was horrified, I wasn’t me. I stared speechless at limbs much longer than I had ever possessed, and of a even coffee shade where I had been porcelain pale. My first instinct, screaming hysterically, I squashed as unproductive, choosing rather to concentrate on pulling the nondescript clothing I had been left on. I also made damn sure everything worked right. I was trying very hard to not think too much about my “new look,” I could always break down later. If I was trapped in a nightmare at least I wanted to have a fighting chance. My hair was a short mess of braids which I settled for smoothing back before I reseated myself on the bed to await revelation. I was discomfited with this body and didn’t want my enemies to see me lurching around. I had been around 5’4, now I was closer to six feet, and totally off-centered. I suppose I should be grateful I was still female. The door slid open again and General Nueven returned escorting the Saladin family’s top legal expert, Jacob. I said nothing, keeping my face as smooth as twenty-two years of rigorous training allowed. Unfortunately, much of that control had to do with the actual muscle and I couldn’t help an occasional slight twitch to my eye.

“You have, of course, brought this upon yourself.” He sat in a chair by the door, hands clasped calmly in his lap. “Over much objection I have been instructed to give you the opportunity to explain your actions.” He tossed a sealed file to me. The type people use either in war or when they want something kept really, really secret.

The metal was cool and it clicked open as soon as my hand closed on it. Ignoring my visitors, if they had meant me any immediate threat it would have already happened, I read with growing horror as a list of my public appearances, the ones I scheduled, not my parents, as well as my private trips, scrolled down the screen. Each time matched with a confirmed sighting of a rebel leader in my vicinity, frequently figures who were soon involved in either a successful raid or like mischief. I read this, incapable of speech, as the lid slammed shut on my coffin. I could protest and plead until the Sun swallowed the Earth without changing a single fact. A few simple coincidences were excusable, but this was several hundred matches, far to many to be accidental. Add the otherwise harmless escapades I orchestrated myself to be irritating, and it was damning. The really sad fact was that I truly had nothing to do with any of this. It was too many to be coincidence, and few enough to look like someone had been very careful to try and not be associated with me. It really looked like a blown cover-up. If I was going down in flames, I would have at least like to have been at fault. I silently re-sealed the file and laid it on the bed. I looked at my “guests” and waited.

“You have nothing to say?”

My smile was thin, “A waste of breath.”

Jacob nodded. “The family was willing to accept the possibility of your innocence. You were enough of asset, with enough promise to add to the family power, that your esteemed parents were even willing, were you to admit guilt and repent, to consider the matter closed provided you underwent a few simple procedures.” I repressed the sudden visceral desire to bare my teeth and growl. I knew what those “procedures” were and would rather have died than submitted to one.

“However, your little ‘accident’, has sealed all prospect of that happening, the Council cannot remain ignorant of the circumstances, and the family has thus to take steps to ensure that you do not smudge their name.

This made no sense, unless... “What the in the heavy?”

Nueven’s eyes grew even more frosty. The latest recruits for DH-97386. Three of twelve escaped, one was recaptured, the rest died.

“Darn.” I said absently, considering this new information. Now this mess made sense, as far as it went. I had jeopardized the Councils precious play pens, research factories for Talent I wasn’t even supposed to be aware of. Horrific facilities where those unlucky enough to belong to a unfortunately unshrinking minority, were tortured and destroyed by monsters in human skin. Reminded me of my family. Common knowledge of these places would bring the Council to its knees faster than anything else. Too bad they would never be common knowledge.

These new insights still left me with a few questions. Like, “why am I still alive?”

“You? First we must detail who exactly you are. Raquell Saladin is dead as far as the world is concerned. You are a young lady from the southern edge of Old Italy by the name of Kizza Marx.”

“Great,” I growled, growing tired of cat and mouse. I no longer had any reason to be diplomatic with these men. “So why go through all this effort to keep Raquell Saladin’s mind alive? What do you want from me?”

Both Jacob and Nueven smiled at me. I fought the urge to squirm backwards. “You possess, Miss Saladin, a wide variety of rather specialized skills. For over two decades you have received the best education in all subjects, both military and civilian, that this race could possibly provide. You are reasonably well versed in arts of self defense, that, combined with your acting skills, make you a prime choice as a field agent. It is unfortunate that you have never been tested in a real situation before, but we trust that your intelligence will make up for that lapse. Your status as daughter of a Council member precluded such jobs before, but, as you have said, you are dead now.”

I waited for more, and when it wasn’t forthcoming, stared in shock. “You’ve done all this, I’m not even sure how you’ve done all this, to get a extra spy? You want me to troll the population to help give the Council the means to keep in power?” I made no attempt to hide my reaction.

“Not at all. We want you to hand over the rebel factions.”

Surely this was a nightmare. I was in someone else’s body, faced with irrefutable proof that I was a traitor of the highest order, being asked to hand over these people I was supposedly committing treason by associating with, and with whom in reality I had never met. Life just all sorts of sucked today.

“Why should I? Assuming that I am a traitor,” here a cool smile from the general, which I ignored, “ what do you have to offer me that might help convince me to do this?”

“I don’t suppose your life is enough incentive?”

“My life might be. But, as has been brought up before, I’m dead. The only life you can offer me is Kizza’s here, and I’m not interested in that. Remember, I’m some sort of fanatic rebel. What is to stop me from running off? I’m already dead, what’s to stop me from simply killing myself to preserve my comrades.”

“I told them you were a willful, stubborn, and clever girl. Only one of which is a particularly admirable trait. You mentioned the extreme measures that must have been gone through to give you this body. I assure you, your mind was not the only thing to which such measures was applied.”

I stared. “I don’t believe you.”

He stood smoothly. “Come and see then.”

I rose on shaky legs and staggered after them. We traversed down corridors as sterile as my room had been until we came to a long glass observation window. I lay on a metal slab. No, the honored Council daughter Raquell Saladin lay on the cold metal. I was Kizza Marx. The body looked awful. Normally smooth skin was abraded, burned, and bruised. Long, thick hair, was short cropped and shaved in patches. Clean limbs were set in unwieldy casts and innumerable tubes and wires connected and penetrated from head to toe.

“It wasn’t needy that this body be available any time soon, so there has been no rush to fix it. It should be done healing within a month or so.

I knew he knew exactly how long it would be, down to within ten seconds. It was the sort a detail a man of his status made it his business to know. When a Council member asked a trusted employee for a figure, that employee had better not come back with anything less than the exact. “This doesn’t matter. It changes nothing.” But it did. And he knew it.

“But of course it does. If you do a good job, the Saladin family would be overjoyed to announce the incredible recovery of their believed brain-dead daughter.” He rested his hands on my shoulders. “Think about it.”

I didn’t shrug him off because it would have been too tempting to kill him. It would have been easy to do in my real body, I knew almost nothing about the capabilities of this one. Another reason not to try I suppose, I couldn’t have borne another embarrassment at that moment. I thought about his offer, while I watched the rather pitiful form in the room and almost unconsciously stretched intact, if unknown, muscles and tendons. I should have been thrilled I was alive. I should have been overjoyed that I had a body as all, even if it wasn’t the one I was born in. I should have said my good-byes to my former flesh, taken Jacob’s offer, and run. I should have been wondering about exactly where this body came from and what happened to its original inhabitant. Actually, I was.

“What happened to the real Kizza?”

“Miss Marx was a orphan. She grew up in a Council orphanage and was more than happy to surrender her life for the betterment of her people.” I sincerely doubted this. I wasn’t stupid. I could see the bruises and scratches of futile struggle on my body.

I could have done it. If my body had been truly dead, if I had thought that my running out on the deal would result in it’s destruction, I could have done it. Left it. Started a new life as a fugitive and never looked back. But I knew better. They would never give it back to me. They couldn’t risk it. I had to assume they truly believed I was a traitor. In which case, they would have nothing to gain, and much to lose, by giving a dangerous element the prestige and power that anyone intimately connected to the Council would have. After all, they couldn’t tell the real story to the public, that would give the rebels the upper hand. And, as long as they had the body, and had the technology to do this mind swap thing, they could use it to make anyone their daughter. I wouldn’t have cared, if it weren’t that in my escapades as the family black sheep, I had met and gained the trust of people who would be in danger from a impostor. Maybe even a few who were honestly connected to the rebellion. Almost all of my friends were guilty of something, and none would be prepared to face a me that wasn’t me. They would be easy pickings, and the Council would destroy them. But there was nothing I could do about that now. I couldn’t reclaim it, and I couldn’t destroy it. For now, the Council had the upper hand. But at least as long as they thought I was playing their game, they wouldn’t be using my body to nose out my friends.

I shrugged out from under Jacob’s grip and tore my eyes from the room. I wasn’t having as much trouble walking now, great. “Lets go.”

The Saladin flunkies had to walk fast to catch me. “You accept then?”

“Any specific terms you wanna tell me about before I say yes?”

“You deliver members of the rebellion up to the Council. When they are satisfied with the authenticity of your repentance, you get your real self back and we forget this whole mess.”

“Methods?”

“Unimportant. Do what you have to. You will have a allotment of funds and anything else you need when you leave this complex, then you are on your own. You are required to send in periodic reports. Other than that, you may do as you wish.” Wonderful, a couple of credits and a home on the street.

I refused to stay in that building for so much as another hour. I demanded and received state-of-the-art body armor. It looked and wore like a slightly thick catsuit. Over it I pulled a slightly ragged, dusty green, T-shirt, and a pair of well worn jeans. I had tested my body and found it adequate. Adequate reflexes, adequate strength, adequate speed. Everything sub-standard to what I had enjoyed, honed, and trained my entire life. I had no idea where to find the rebellion, much less go about gaining their trust and turning them in. If I was going to do this, I was really going to do it. That meant infiltrating the heart of the enemy and destroying them all at once. They killed, sometimes the innocent. They spied, and sometimes people died for it. They refused to compromise with their opposition. They were just like a baby Council. And if I tried really hard, I could forget that they were fighting for their lives, for the simple right to live. Of course, there was also the little fact that someone had gone through a great deal of trouble to set me up and the rebels had a starring role on my list of suspects.

So here I am. Miami. Supposedly a splendid city in centuries past, now a derelict collection of ruins. Barely policed, and never dependably. A hotspot for the illegal drug trade and a breeding ground for disease. Wearing my rag-tag outfit, carrying a beat up, thread bare, duffel, and I still looked overdressed. I had knives up both my sleeves and a dozen more hidden on my person. Not to mention two guns and an assortment of other goodies in the sack. I had added a scarf to my waist, the banding on the end showing my interest in employment. So far I had been approached a half a dozen times, nothing I was interested in. I had asked to be dropped off here for two reason. A, it was a “den of iniquity” where I could maybe find a lead, and B, it was a lawless enough place that I had a decent chance of escaping any sort of watchdog the Council might have placed on me. I had been given the parting gift of knowledge by my tormentors: this body had been infected with one of the rather nasty forms of cancer modern medicine was still unable to cure. I had a definite time limit. Too bad I had no idea what it was.

I had stumbled upon a reasonably safe hole, and while not totally assured of my ability to utilize my body to best effect, was fairly certain I could put up a decent fight if assailed.

Three weeks and I was no closer to anything. I had chased dead ends into the dirt and purchased more drugs than I would have believed possible in a vain effort to loosen tongues. I had killed six people before I managed to convince the rest of the local populace that I wanted to be left alone, and could enforce my request. I had come to the conclusion that Miami would be a nicer place if it was melted down to the bedrock and used for farming. On second thought, maybe buried would be a better idea. I would hate to think of the chemicals the smoke from bombing this place would contain, we’d have half the Old States drugged out of their minds. After the mess in Detroit, that’s all we’d need.

“Damn.” My door had been opened during my daily scrounge for information. I habitually left the lock in line with a faint scratch on the wood, and it had been turned. Wonderful, just what I needed, more uninvited company. I crept around to the side and slipped through the boards over a window. Looking around in frustration after a thorough, and I thought futile, search, I found him. Buried in my blankets under a half burned table, a scrap of a child, maybe ten and far too thin. Even allowing for the general poverty of the area he should have been able to scavenge better than that. Topped with a mess of filthy auburn curls, he slept with the habits of the perused. Hidden, silent, and lightly. In my distraction I had misjudged my footing and carelessly stepped on a piece of broken glass. I cursed silently, I would never had made such a mistake before. The boy reacted like a spring, leaping out of the blankets and facing me with a rusty and broken bit of blade he had tucked into his palm.

“Go away.” He brandished the metal at me. I watched him carefully, people often underestimated those they dismissed as insignificant. It was a good way to get hurt or killed, and somehow I doubted the ability of the local medical facilities.

“It’s my home. Why should I?” An encouraging start I suppose. I made no attempt to hide either the knife in my hand or the gun on my hip. Apparently he was not used to such challenge because his only response was a look of frustration and wedging back into the corner. I doubted he’d lived on the street very long. No person truly accustomed to them would willingly be backed into a dead end. I sheathed the blade and contemplated this turn of events. The smart thing to do would be to kill him and toss his body out as another warning. Since I didn’t feel like doing that to an obviously desperate child who had done nothing except borrow a blanket, the next best thing to do would be to toss him out alive and forget the whole thing. I knew I was intimidating. Three weeks or so of survivalist living on top of an already decent physique left me as a six foot, muscular, looming threat to anyone, certainly to a frightened kid. I sighed and made my decision. I could use a unmentionable partner, and having such a defenseless looking tag-along might make me more palatable to the rebels. Who knew? He might even be useful for something other than bait. I reached for his arm, he slashed at my hand.

“Lemme go!” He tried to dodge around me and ran into my leg.

“I don’t think so, this is my house and I found you in it, that means you must be mine too.” I made another grab for him and got a handful of hair and a nasty bite for my efforts. He thought fast on his feet, I’ll give him that. He put his scrap of metal to use sawing at my ribs while I got a fair look at him. Good thing I wore my armor as habitually as skin. Given a few weeks and he might even have scratched it. After my viewing, I reassessed my opinion of the brat. He was probably closer to twelve and had type calluses on his fingers, that meant he was from nowhere near here. The druglords and local powers would have only employed a child if the kid was a true genius or they were desperate. If he was a true genius he would have been decently fed. If he was a last ditch option he would have been used to the street. He had probably been some upper class kid, certainly he had had regular access to decent technology. Most likely stolen for ransom and ditched here by creeps who were either sadistic, or had no stomach for blood. I tossed him back into the thready blanket and made sure he couldn’t worm around my legs. “Ya gotta name?” Apparently he had decided I wasn’t going to kill him, or at least that he wasn’t going to manage an escape.

“Dean” was the mumbled reply as he stared determinedly at the dirt floor.

“Where you from?”

“Hastings.”

“Hastings where?” I was quickly reaching the end of my patience.

“Iberia. Hastings Iberia.” Yeah, right. And I was Kizza Marx.

Hastings Iberia was a sealed city. That meant to live there you had to be voted in by a communal committee. Hastings was one of the five most exclusive sealed community’s in the known universe. They had put themselves on the map by denying residence to a member of the Council a couple of hundred or so years ago. Of course, it was only in the last few decades that they had recovered from said member’s unofficial retaliation, but they had otherwise gotten away with it. And were remembered for it. To have lived there, “Dean,” had to be the son of someone really, really rich and/or important. That would explain the kidnapping, but I probably would have heard of it, and who would be stupid enough to dump such a goldmine in a cesspool like this?

I wanted to ask where he was really from, but he was watching me like he expected me to eat him, and if I was going to keep him around I should probably not alienate him at the earliest opportunity. Where he was from didn’t really matter that much. He was here now. Yes, I was lonely.

I turned my back on him and rummaged through my pack till I came up with some crackers and a half-eaten lump of moldy cheese. Mold isn’t bad for you, just tastes sharp. I tossed these in his direction and continued to dig until I came up with the tattered remains of an outfit I had demolished beyond repair in a alley fight a few days ago. I couldn’t do much with it for myself, but a bit of sewing magic, and it should make a something wearable for my undersized guest. My tutors had insisted I learn to sew, it was a lesson in concentration and patience, as well as a useful skill. I had argued at the time, shows what I know.

I turned back around to find my food inhaled and Dean asleep. I tossed the cloth on the counter, sealed the hovel as best I could, and retrieved my other blanket. Well wrapped, I spent my few moments before passing out contemplating my change in circumstance. Could I care for another person? Nope. Could I protect another person fairly? Nope. Did I have any business undertaking responsibility for another person, much less a child? Absolutely not. Sounded like a good foundation for a working relationship.

Dean did have a few good points, though it took me the better part of a month to get a grip on them. He was a good distance runner, and even more important, he was fast. He could lie with a straight face and fake injury fairly well, crucial survival skills. He also had a almost perfect memory for direction and could backtrack, correctly, in places that turned me around. These were the things I noticed almost immediately. Other things that caught my attention as the days bled into weeks was his manners, fairly good ones, and the breadth of his education. I don’t think a topic came up that Dean didn’t know something about. What he seemed to know most about, however, was military history. We had many lively discussions, after he got over his fear of me, on tactics and decisions from battles as ancient as the American Civil War of the mid-nineteenth century, to things as recent as the riots in Greater Castille over water shortages three years ago. Anything recenter than that and he was at a loss. Which, though he refused to discuss it, gave me a fairly good idea of how long he had been on the street. Dean’s greatest asset to me however, even more important than his totally vulnerable appearance (a lie. Dean, once he was fed and rested, proved to more than know his way around a knife), was his Comp skills. Someone had gone through a great deal of trouble to make sure the little brat could hack his was into just about anything. With skills like his there was absolutely no reason to be on the street anywhere. The army would have taken him in just to make sure no one else got him. After watching him for ten minutes on the mini Comp I’d brought with me, I spent most of the day grilling him. With hot irons I might have gotten something out of him. Using my voice, the only thing I managed to glean was that he was terrified of someone finding him, and he seemed to think that his footsteps through the cryptic world of numbers would give him away.

We’d had been haunting the world together for almost five weeks when Dean vanished.

After the first three weeks Dean and I were closer than me and my real brother could have imagined being. Dean was a sharp cookie and it hadn’t taken him long to realize there was something really wrong with me. I suppose when the person you live with can’t walk for twenty minutes after she wakes up from a deep sleep, you get kinda suspicious. I couldn’t walk because everytime I dreamed, I dreamed I was me again, Raquell Saladin, age 22, height 5’4. Not Kizza Marx, age almost 50, height 6’1. It took awhile to get used to the new body when I awoke.

I had turned in one report in the two and a half months I had been lurking around Miami. They had wanted to know what in hell I thought I was doing. Was the rebellion here? Did I have a lead? I dug my patience out again and carefully explained to Jacob’s understudy that any members of the rebellion who had managed to elude the Council’s best efforts so far were not going to roll belly up for some strange girl who showed up and started poking around. Then I got nasty. He turned me off just about the time I started running out of explicatives to pepper my sentences with. Oh well, what loss.

What I had told the toady was truth. The odds of rebel members being camped out in Miami were very good, just about the same as them being camped out anywhere else. I needed to spend at least six months in a place before I could afford to write it off and move on. I really needed to be spending a year as a minimum, but I was sorta short in the time department. Dean had wheedled out of me what I was looking for in the first few days. I don’t think he believed me when I said I didn’t want to hurt them. But he didn’t run off, and he didn’t refuse to help me, so I guess it was cool. We were down in the real slums when Dean started acting weird. Oh, sorry, weirder. This part of town was nothing but trash heaps. Literal, trash heaps. It was about a hour after sunfall and we had just finished shaking down some class A scavengers when Dean got a really funny look on his face and said he thought we should leave the area. I gave him a “look,” and asked why. He just shook his head and took off. I had been planning on combing the entire area that evening and the sudden cancellation of plans did not please me in the slightest. Finally, I decided to simply push on without him. If Dean was going to be spooky he could do it on his own time. I had taken less than ten steps when I heard the commotion of an on-coming gang. A few minutes later, completely buried in trash, with the careful exception of my eyes, I was treated to a sight few see and live to relate. A full gang moot, complete with screaming executions and anti-Council dogma. This was why Miami was such a miserable place. This, and a few other places in the world, were hangouts for the worst society had to lose. People who were completely incapable of life with civilized limits (comparably). They all congregated in places the Council had unofficially declared up for grabs. It was a convenient solution to a inconvenient problem. As long as they stayed within the boundaries of the city, and didn’t mess with the Talented, the Council wouldn’t interfere. I had so far managed to completely avoid dealing with them. I planned on continuing the trend. I stayed in that pile till dawn, then crept home.

Dean watched from the corner of the room as I systematically stripped and scrubbed every inch of skin with the water I had insisted he fetch. Undrinkable, it was still far cleaner than where I had spent the night.

“So, how did you spend the night?” I was proud of the levelness of my voice.

“Worrying about you. I don’t know why you’re so pissed, I did try to warn you.”

“Yeah,” I said as I wrinkled my nose and tugged the omnipresent armor back over my damp skin. “Lets talk about that warning.”

Dean shrugged. “ I saw the signs and panicked.”

“Signs?”

“You know. It looked like a hangout, firepit, no real flammable trash left in the area. The locals were all cleared out.” He gazed up at me.

“Ummm, right.” It was plausible. I had been concentrating on my next target and after assuring myself that there was no one else in the immediate vicinity, had not paid much attention to my surroundings. Surroundings were one of Deans strong points. He always picked up on wrongness in an area well before I did. He more than paid for the trouble of providing for him. We trusted each other with our lives. Looking into Dean’s earnest, guiless, eyes, I wondered if I had made a mistake. He was lying somehow.

But that suddenly meant nothing the next day, when, after leaving for a normal hunt for food in a district I deemed safe enough, he failed to return.

I panicked myself at that, I hadn’t realized how attached to the brat I had become. I spent the entire day combing the area for a sign of his presence. I beat up on the locals and tore the district apart. Then, frustrated, hungry, alone, uninspired, and confused, I cried for the better part of the night. Deans disappearance had brought out lots of the grief I’d been ignoring since the hospital. That was the first night since I’d woken up after the wreck that I fell asleep without stretching, cleaning up, securing the area, and fully arming myself. I was lucky to live.

I looked for Dean on and off for the rest of the month. I never found so much as a clue as to where he had gone. I imagined his body was at the bottom of a trash heap somewhere. At the end of my fourth month, in the midst of a packed market, someone shoved a note in my note as they walked past. The crowd made it impossible to tell who had done it.

I ducked into a mostly deserted alley and unrolled the scrap of paper.

It was a address in ...New York?

New York city was another Miami-ish area. Not in that it was a derelict wasteland, but in that it had once been a very important city and was now considerable less. New York city had been the stock capital of the world at one point. Much of the New England area of what was the United States had been important to trade and business industries. Massive earthquakes in the middle of the twenty-fifth century had taken care of that. The whole region sat on a tectonic plate line. They had no earthquake codes, so then they had no cities. Today New York was pretty much a residential area. The actual city was a business district, but nothing of real importance. The address was for a store right on the outerlimits of the city. Now I just had to figure out how to get there.

My mode of transportation could easily be a test. If I called in the military to give me a lift I would find a deserted store when I arrived. The same deal if I managed to hitchhike. No one who was really what I was pretending to be would trust enough to hitchhike. I settled for stealing a antique motorbike with a updated fuel system, that means it ran on electricity like modern vehicles. It would take me at least five days, driving twenty hours a day, to get to New York using it because of the route I would have to take. Roads of the type I would have to use for the bike were a rarity. But the bike was a believable option. Most of my other ones were not.

I spent three days scoping out New York. I did the touristy things, gawked at the ruins (which I had visited several times on family business), nodded at the tour guides, that stuff. I finally decided that I had had enough with the stalling and took the direct approach. I armed myself to the teeth and went in.

The shop was a tiny one that sold odds and ends connected with the cities past. Old subway maps, newspaper reprints, vid tapes. It was a real hole in the wall. I tossed the scrap of paper on the creditors counter and concentrated on looking as harmless as possible. He waved me towards a door in the back. It was dark and I couldn’t find a light switch. I was about to walk out and try the creditor again when the door shut and someone shoved a gun in my back. Great. I could probably have gotten off fine if it was a street tough or like amateur. But if this was a rebel flunky, and their job was dealing with unknown’s, then their skill was probably at least comparable to mine in this body.

“Uncle?” Someone chuckled in the dark ahead of me.

“Raquell Saladin?” I froze. Then all I felt was rage. Why had the Council drawn me to New York? I had wasted a great deal of resources to be here, blown anything I might have gained in Miami, for nothing. I guess there was a small chance this was something else, it had better be.

I got my voice under firm control. “Kizza Marx. I believe the news reported the Councilman’s daughter dead.”

“Lost actually. Not that anything on the news can be trusted.”

“A bit paranoid aren’t you?”

“Perhaps. I’ve a offer for you Miss... Marx. Actually it’s a proposition and an offer. A interesting proposition, would you like to hear it?”

“I’d like to see you, and have a name, at which point I might be interested in any proposition you might have.”

“I suppose that’s fair.” The soft click warned me to close my eyes a instant before the room was flooded with light. I opened my eyes cautiously and winced. Maybe off was better. The man who I assumed had addressed me was standing by the far wall. He wore a nice button down and generic slacks. He was probably around my height, Kizza’s height, and totally unremarkable. Medium brown hair, medium brown eyes, no distinguishing traits, average tan: very dangerous. I decided to be extra polite, it couldn’t hurt and being addressed by name already had me at the disadvantage.

“ My name is Faul. Would you like a seat?” The gun guy moved around into my view, fetching chairs I assumed. He was rather nondescript himself, hair a bit darker, light eyes, not really homely or handsome. Just ...blah.

“Thank you.” His flunky handed me a folding chair, what charm. I set it up facing the apparent boss.

“Now that you are settled, are you ready to listen?” I nodded, I’d probably be better to keep my mouth shut.

“I propose that Councilman Saladin’s rather notorious daughter, Raquell, did not die in the Lift crash as has been supposed. I further propose that her consciousness has somehow been transfused into the body of another, and that she is being forced into acting as a sort of bloodhound.” He watched very steadily as I started to open my mouth a few times and finally settled for clearing my throat.

“Interesting.” I fought the urge to rise and pace. He settled back into his chair, flunky-boy had disappeared sometime while I was floundering.

“Isn’t it though. I really don’t need any confirmation from you Raquell, this information has already been verified reliably.”

Life is all about risk. I swallowed and prepared to take a big one. Or not so big if you consider that the only way he could have verified this information was to have had it pulled out of my head. He, his organization, might have gotten wind of the Councils scheme through ordinary intrigue, but they would never have found any other way to prove it. I tried for nonchalant. “I wasn’t really planning on denying it, Sir. I was mearly interested in ascertaining how much you knew before I committed myself.

“Very wise of you. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t have your head removed from your shoulders.”

Other than the mess? “Sir, I have searched months for the slightest sign of the rebellion, now that I’ve found you, all you want to do is kill me?” I carefully allowed a hint of outrage to enter my voice.

He casually waved me to silence, I decided to take the hint. “ Others search far longer with less result, especially those with Council ties. Rather presumptuous of you to assume I am connected to the rebellion isn’t it Miss Saladin? There are other systems of organized crime alive and well in the world today, and you were not exactly either selective or circumspect in your searching. A Councilman’s daughter is quite a catch for anyone not quite on the sunny side of legality, just think of all the information you have waiting for us.” His smile reminded me of my father facing down a opponent. Mine wasn’t too pleasant either.

“My dear Faul,” was it my imagination, or did he draw himself up a bit? “I am neither easily cowed or intimidated. Nor am I easy to lie to. The creeps who did this to me at least had the decency to be forward about their motive and intentions. Your games are beginning to bore me. I know about the rebellion, most everything that my father did. I know about the Talented that use your ranks as a rare refuge. I am more than certain that you have picked clean my mind already, or at least the surface of it, as I am also aware of their limitations.” I saw no reason to go into depth on the different caliber’s of Talent, or the very rare ones of true power. He knew, I knew, and the odds of him having one handy were slim to none. “So why don’t you just get on with whatever you asked me here for and skip the petty threats and politicking.” I settled myself more comfortably into what I hoped was the perfect picture of easy aristocratic boredom.

His expression relaxed into a true smile. “Very well Miss Saladin, I accept your terms. No more politicking or threats.

We monitor the Council as closely as possible. As well as all their movements and ...extracurricular activities. We also keep a close watch on their families as Council offspring that do not succeed their enthroned parent frequently become some of our worst foes. Robert Saladin is one of the most powerful members currently residing and the damage a massive embarrassment would cause him is worth a great deal of sacrifice. You were targeted to be the source of this embarrassment.” He didn’t look too embarrassed about it. While this was something I had long suspected, hearing it blatantly admitted was not winning friends and influencing people with me. He spread his hands in an almost apologetic fashion, yeah right. “It was either you or your brother. Your mother is far to crafty to be trapped in a compromising enough situation. You made the choice easy. Your insistence on little rebellions of your own at every possible turn made you a much more plausible candidate than your boot-licking sibling.” He frowned slightly. “We did not expect this turn of events however. At worst we thought your father would be able to cover it all up and write you off. We did not think he would manage to turn it into an advantage and win even more approbation from it. Have you any idea how long this took to set up?”

Most of my life? “A fair one. So, if I hadn’t hit that Lift, what did you have planned? Something on live vid perhaps? Where the only recourse would have been my very public execution?” My voice was devoid of emotion, it was either than or snapping fury. I really needed to wrok on my temper.

“We are fighting a war Raquell. You were on the enemy side. I make no apologies for me and mine.”

“Were?”

“I also mentioned a offer, remember?”

“Yeah.” I replied grudgingly. “What is it?”

“We wish you to join us. I wasn’t kidding earlier, the information you could provide would be the saving of hundreds of lives.”

I stared. “You could never trust me. I would be in the same boat with you that I am with the Council. Except with the Council the worst that will happen is I will get a painful death after long years of fruitless search, and hopefully, my body will be destroyed. If I slip up with you I will get a equally long but torturous death, and my body will probably be used to track down and slaughter all my friends.”

He watched me calmly. “I don’t think so Raquell. We are prepared to trust you fully. And you need have no worry for your friends safety, you will have your body back so the Council will lose that method of attack.”

“I’ll what?”

“Have your body back, this body isn’t hard of hearing is it?” His smile made a slight return at my shock. “We have to destroy that institution anyway, little more trouble to recover your proper flesh while we are at it. I can’t promise we can put you back in it, but we can make sure they can’t put anyone else in it.”

“Have to destroy it anyway?”

He shrugged as if it were an obvious conclusion. “We cannot possibly allow the Council to retain control of this type of procedure.” He gestured at me, “At this moment only the Council member Saladin has access to it, his techies developed it. He has no reason to think that we know anything about it. They believe they have you in a stranglehold, so no leak on your end. Considering that, it is far safer for them to keep the technicians, researchers, and most importantly, the hard evidence, in one easy-to-contain place.”

“So you’re going to gamble a bunch of lives on the chance that you can destroy functional knowledge of this procedure by blowing up one building? Do you know what security is like there? You’ll all be killed! In addition to the fact that there will be at least one copy of all records in sealed family histories, which renders the entire operation pointless in the first place”

“I do hope for results a bit less dramatic than that. The equipment will be slagged, the working records destroyed, the people intimately involved dead, and Saladin won’t dare reboot the project for at least five years. He will have to take at least that much time to re-check all the security stop-gaps to find where the information leaked from, not to mention relating to the Council how a supposedly secure operation he was responsible for was so severely compromised. As far as us all being killed, I would expect that you might have a few ideas that would help us retain a safer position.”

I leaned forward to better watch his face. “So I tell you, and then you kill me.” He made a exasperated sound.

“I told you, we are willing to trust you Raquell.”

“There is absolutely no reason for you to trust me. I’m supposed to take you at your word?” How dumb did he think I was? Faul rose to his feet, I kept my butt where it was.

“If you would be so good as to accompany me, I believe I might offer you some proof.”

“Or shoot me.”

“Miss Saladin, you must choose. This is the best I can do, take it or leave it.” He folded his chair, leaned it in the corner, and pulled on a jacket. Then he and his flunky walked out the door.

I didn’t need to give it much thought. The very idea that I could have my body back, my friends safe, and even possibly personel safety, or as much safety as would exist for me anywhere now, was overwhelming. It was definitely worth a bit of risk. I had caught up with them before they were out of the shop.

I didn’t say anything, neither did they. We walked for a few miles, then climbed into a lift with no windows. I could tell by the sound as we took of that we were quite high. It still seemed that no one was interested in talking, so after around an hour, I fell asleep. Any good survivalist knows you gotta grab it while you can.

I woke up to someone yelling my name and arms being wrapped around my neck. No, not my name, Kizza. I felt heavy and very uncoordinated, more so than usual, I’d been drugged. Whatever anger I might have felt was eclipsed by the sudden awareness of who it was glued to my body, “Dean?” Clipped curls worked their way more securely under my chin, I hugged him as tight as I could and not be preventing his breathing.

“You see Raquell?” I looked up into Faul’s face. “We have all the proof we need of your trustworthiness and character.” I slowly rose to my feet, Dean sliding till he was clamped around my waist rather than my throat.

“I don’t understand.” Faul sighed.

“Dean is Talented Miss Saladin. His Talent is mostly in the empathic area, specifically receptivity. Anyone he would willingly keep company with is welcome with us. Is worthy of our trust.”

I went cold. It had been simple chance that Dean was not with me when I had run into the Council soldiers that I had turned my report into. They would have sensed what he was, and we both would have been destroyed. For the first time I really wanted to backhand Dean into the nearest wall. I suppose he sensed the sudden emotion because he backed off.

He raised a defiant face to me. I think it was the first time I had seen him without some sort of dirt helping to obscure his features. “I wanted to tell you Kizza. But you had some big secret I couldn’t tell anything about, you wouldn’t trust me. You told me you were hunting the rebellion and lied about that story too. Then, when I was finally ready to tell you anyway, I got grabbed.” He stood a few feet back, watching me warily with more than eyes. He looked well fed for the first time and had put on weight. His clothes fit and I couldn’t see blood or bruises anywhere on him. I gave a long sigh and wrapped my arm around his shoulders. I turned to Faul.

“What do you want me to do?’

So that’s how I ended up flat on my ass with lasgun fire singing the top of my head, pinned down behind a table. We had taken out most of the heavy troops and serious weaponry in the initial assault. Then about six of us pressed deeper into the complex. Four to destroy our targets, two to recover my body. Unfortunately for us, everything down to the roaches in the place had been trained in combat tactics. Both ends of the hall I was trapped in were closed off, they were trying to keep me there until their reinforcements arrived. I consulted my internal clock. I, we, only had about six more minutes at the most until we were well and truly sunk. I was contemplating a suicide run when my partner finally decided to help out.

Of all people, they had stuck me with Ravae. Though not Talented as I understood it, Faul had assured me that Ravae had the best chance of surviving my part of the mission, which was, after all, the most dangerous. My first impression of my partner had not been reassuring: he had been glued to the vid, laying in a ocean of spilled soda and crumbs. His only reply when Faul had told him he was going on a mission, of which his part had a very small chance of success and a very likely possibility of death or capture, was to grunt and flip the channel. He’d shown up to leave half dressed and barely awake. No one else had seemed concerned, so I didn’t say anything. Of course, their lives weren’t going to depend on him either. After the first thirty seconds of watching Ravae in action I revised my opinion. On base he may have been a lazy slob, but there was nothing lazy or sloblike about his teqnique in the field. We had been surprised by the number of guards when we arrived, and I fully expected Faul to abort the mission and had braced myself for disappointment, I saw no other option. Instead he had looked the scene over for a moment, then asked Ravae to go do something about it. Ravae had by this point managed to pull on his shirt, note he was wearing no armor I recognized, and, after shooting Faul a disgusted look, vaulted into the clearing between us and the compounds shooting guards. I stared open mouthed as he avoided every shot with fluid and effortless seeming grace, then proceeded to disarm (literally in one case) the guards who were the immediate threat, before vanishing into the shadows of open doors. I looked at Faul as we took off across the distance. He grinned tightly at me, “Any questions?”

Shaking my head, I sped in pursuit of my partner.

I failed to find him, but memory led me through the twisting and unmarked corridors to the lab where my body lay. Carelessness had allowed them to trap me, I was been working on the lock when the first shot disabled my right arm. I wasted no time in kicking the tables on the other wall into a weak sort of barrier and huddling between them, occasionally letting off a shot to make sure they stayed too far away to be able to fire down into my shelter.

Four shots sang over my head, silencing the fire from the other side. A moment later I raised my head enough to see Ravae casually busting the guns of sprawled opponents. I glared and climbed out, “Took your sweet time.”

He looked at me darkly, his sarcasm cutting, “I assumed that being gassed didn’t fit into your plans. Sorry if I was wrong. I suppose I could turn it back on for you on my way out if you care to wait here.” I hadn’t even noticed the small openings along the top of the far wall, shit. I didn’t have time to deal with my surly partner however, I was having trouble with the door. Frustration and pain dulled my fingers, we only had four minutes left to get out. I thought I was going to start screaming when rough hands hauled me away and tossed me into one of the overturned tables. I sat up, fingers wrapped instinctively around the trigger, in time to see Ravae push the door up and slip into the lab. I had barely regained my feet when he reappeared, a familiar form slung over one shoulder, and took off. I managed to catch him, weighed down as he was, and we sprinted back to the blown open guard post we had entered from. The silence of the building was eerie, someone had broken the alarm system, I hadn’t thought that possible. Ravae made no noise as he moved and the lack of sound made the world somewhat surreal. Time had slowed, the Lift was in sight, we still had two minutes to clear the area.

Ravae spun, the gun in his hand firing even as I acknowledged the motion. Fast as he was, he was still too late. Warmth spread over the top of my back and down my spine. I still wasn’t hearing anything, but now the reason was different. I saw Ravae’s gun flash twice more before arms wrapped tight around me and I had the vague sensation of being lifted. The last this I saw before I blacked out was the disconcerting sight of my own slack features. I reached out to touch them, but I don’t remember if I managed.

I woke up again once we were in the air to a furious babble of noise. I was on my belly, and, except for the change in position, and a tremendous headache, felt much as I had upon awaking after the crash that had started this whole mess. My mouth tasted like blood this time though. Funny how that was reassuring.

I shouldn’t have been alive, whatever had hit me had melted my armor entirely, I guess that’s all that had kept my torso from being vaporized. There were some people kneeling around me arguing. Almost as soon as I became aware again someone laid a hand on my forehead, my headache seemed to drain into that point. The only thing I really got out of the conversation before I blacked out again was Ravae, his voice thick and a touch desperate, “It is not an injury, not like the others.” And Faul’s, “Try anyway.”

I snuggled up against the source of warmth. My arms felt almost impossibly weak, but I still managed to wrap them around him. I rested my cheek against his back and was on the edge of true sleep when my eyes flew open. His? I struggled up out of the sudden chokingly ominous nest of blankets and found myself in the middle of a huge bed. Every muscle ached as though even the slightest movement was unbelievably taxing. I stared at my hands and kept staring. They were small and pale. I reached one of them into the silky short mess of my hair and laughed out loud. I was right again. My voice was hoarse and rusty sounding with disuse. I remember what had woken me and turned to the other person in the bed. I pulled the oversized T-shirt that was my only garment over my knees to hold in warmth against the icy air as I rolled the figure onto his back and moved the fabric to see his face. I picked out features made harsh by the moonlight streaming in through the balcony doors, and was shocked to recognize my erstwhile partner. He looked like the proverbial death warmed over. But he was warm, and I was freezing. As much as I wanted to throw open the glass doors and dance naked on the balcony, I would probably collapse before I made ten feet. I settled for crawling over the bed and making sure he wasn’t getting any cold air before scrambling back in myself and huddling against him. I suppose my suddenly protective turn towards a virtual stranger whom I didn’t have a overwhelming fondness for, and whom was sharing a bed with me, might have been alarming normally, but just now I was to tired, cold, and elated to care.

I woke up alone.

I groaned and stumbled off the side of the mattress barely managing to land on my feet. I felt almost like I’d had too much to drink. I rifled through the closet till I had found a robe of sorts that would fit decently enough. Having no idea where I was, I thought it well that I not amble through the building in a borrowed T-shirt and bare legs. I ached my way through a series of basic stretches, ensuring myself that none of the degenerative damage was permanent. Satisfied, if not thrilled, with my performance (which was still only slightly worse than the best I had managed in the other body), I rubbed my eyes sleepily and put on my best little girl face to go in search of my host.

The first person I found was Faul’s pet flunky, Kris. “Hey Kris, where’s Faul, or whomever else is in charge?”

He stared at me for a minute before answering slowly, “Faul’s in charge. He’s in the kitchen.” I watched him expectantly until he added, “Two floors down, you’ll smell it from the landing. Take the stairs, the building’s clean.”

I nodded, assured both that there was no lasting damage to my body, that this wasn’t a dream, and that I wasn’t going to encounter anyone who wasn’t with us in this place. I bounced brightly down two flights of stairs and skidded across the marble foyer to the open doorway. Faul sat on a high stool apparently slicing a bagel from a artfully arraigned tray. I climbed up next to him and reached for my own.

“Lovely morning isn’t it?” He turned to me, his appearance haggard. “Are you sick? You look like you haven’t slept in a week?” He smiled tiredly.

“It’s nice someone is cheerful today. How do you feel Raquell?”

I considered his question carefully before answering. “Physically I feel like shit. I hurt everywhere. I have to pay attention to keep my eyes focused, and my balance in atrocious. Happily this all appears to be correcting itself as we speak. Mentally I feel better than I have in as long as I can remember.” I looked at him seriously. “You have shown me more kindness and acceptance than anyone else in my entire life. I never dreamed that I could be restored. My life was lost, you gave it back to me. I return your favor by offering my life and knowledge without restraint to your cause. If you will have me.”

Faul reached out for my hands. “I was going to ask you if you would join us, but not until you had had some time. That you would offer yourself so generously lifts my heart. But it is a heavy commitment and not one that can be revoked once it is sealed. I would ask that you stay with us for a time before making such a choice.”

I nodded. What he said made sense, but it had been so important to me that I express my feelings that I had bypassed it in my haste to offer myself. Apparently impulsivity was a new facet of me that my recent adventures had brought to light. I was going to have to learn to rein it in a bit. Something else occurred to me suddenly. “How did you manage this? The equipment was destroyed I thought. What did you do?” Faul looked back at his bagel.

“I haven’t had much sleep lately Raquell. Perhaps we could address the quention and answer cycle later?” His manner had become distant and I wanted to know why. I reached out and grabbed his arm as he slid off the stool and prepared to leave.

“ No.” He stared at me. “Why haven’t you slept lately? The calender says it has only been about five days since the mission. We appear to be safe, why haven’t you slept? What has happened?” Something else. “And why by light was Ravae in bed with me?” He bunched the muscles in his arm until I reluctantly let go, then gazed at nothing for a moment before facing me.

“You are right. You should know. I have no idea how this might effect you and you can’t tell us about problems if you don’t know what to look for.” Huh? Was it just me or had he suddenly become hallucinatory?

“Faul?” He offered me his arm and escorted me down the hall. We came to another door that he pushed open with his free hand, dropping mine as he did so. Ravae was there, curled asleep on an handmade afghan draped over a antique couch. Dark hair shadowed his face and I couldn’t see him breathing. A woman with short cropped, spiked, light brown hair sat with crossed legs on the floor in front of the couch. Her eyes didn’t so much as flicker from the huge vid screen in the wall as Faul and I moved closer.

“Yo boss.”

“Serene.” This chicks name was “Serene”? She looked like a “Letha” or maybe even “Killer.” Certainly not a “Serene.”

As I watched, the girl reached back without looking and felt Ravae’s throat, apparently taking his pulse. “Close enough to normal, no need to be concerned.” Ravae didn’t move and it was only this close that I realized how deathlike his pallor really was.

“Faul?” I asked again, this time with more urgency, I had the impression that I was missing something big.

“Thank you Serene. I’ll be back shortly. Raquell, if you’ll come with me.”

I followed him, frowning, out of the room and up to the second floor into a place where a entire wall made of glass illuminated the room with morning light. Glass walls had become a rather popular design in the last several centuries. “You, as Kizza, were fatally injured escaping. After seeing the extent of the damage, I was surprised you were still breathing when Ravae dumped you on the Lift floor. We had initially planned, assuming you did actually manage to rescue your body and survive the retreat, to discuss with you the possibility of not even attempting to restore you.” He held up his hand before I could open my mouth. He really was getting to know me. “This is not a breech of faith Raquell. If you had insisted we would have honored our deal. But allow me, please, to give you our reasons.” I nodded assent and sank into a overstuffed chair by the glass. He remained standing a few feet away from me.

“We did totally demolish, not only all the hardware we could find, but the complex entire, though you were not conscious at that point to see it. We did not recover any of the records we had hoped to obtain, though that was the only failure we had. Other than that, and one other matter, the mission was a stunning success. It is highly doubtful that without that information we would have managed to repeat the experiment, or even discover how they had done it in the first place, within my, or your, lifetime. It would have been a very expensive and time consuming process with little to no result. In addition to which it would have been quite foolish.” At my raised brow he smiled in a tired fashion and took the seat nearest me. “You heard me right, foolish. The Council daughter Raquell Saladin is universally famous. She has been seen on vids, in magazines, and all other assorted media types throughout her life. The news of her supposed death is still a favorite topic with some news companies despite the frowning of the Council. Every person in the Councils reach knows what she looks and sounds like. Certainly every Council flunky knows her. Kizza Marx is a nothing. Not even a footnote. We could probably have dealt with the cancer she was infected with and you could have lived a life of relative obscurity, with us or without us. Since you no longer have that option, and despite my earlier insistence that you give yourself time before committing to our cause, even taking into account your highly trained skills, I do not see how you can survive on your own. Your chances would be better if you could get off planet, but with the governmental stranglehold on that, I chalk it up there next to a list of other impossibilities.

I had learned that the way to deal with Faul’s informing tactics was focus on the matter at hand and think about the rest of it later. “That is all very interesting Faul, and I think you are probably right. I don’t know what sort of answer I would have given you, but as the point is now moot I don’t see how it matters. You have said that Kizza was mortally injured, and you said that you have no idea how the initial process of transferring my mind was accomplished, and could not repeat it. Yet here I am, did my mind automatically revert with the death of the other body? I notice that you have not mentioned Ravae at all.”

He shook his head and slumped lower. “No Raquell. With Kizza’s death you should have died too. But I cannot talk about that without broaching another topic.

You remember when I first partnered you with Ravae and you asked if he was Talented?”

“Yep.” I couldn’t wait to hear this. “You told me no, not as I understood it.”

“That’s true. Ravae has a entirely unheard of manifestation of Talent. If we understood more about Talent in the first place perhaps we would have a inkling of how he does what he does, as it is...” He shrugged.

I prodded impatiently, “what exactly does he do?”

Faul looked past me to the window, though I had the impression he wasn’t seeing anything I would have had I looked. “He heals.”

“Pardon?”

Faul focused on me. “He is a healer Raquell. Not a very hard concept, you find it in literature all the time.”

“Not the type of literature my keepers smiled on. So he does what, makes cuts disappear instantly?”

“He can, though not usually. It is very very taxing for him to exercise this you understand, and at the same time very hard for him not to. He has a broad range of ability.”

I frowned. “I don’t understand.” I really didn’t.

“Neither do we. I can only tell you what I know from observation and the little bit he lets us in.”

“Tell me about this ability.”

“He can sense injury, mostly in the physical sense, but also a bit in the psychological one. He can walk through a room and know instantly what is wrong with everyone. It is like he has a molecular map of each person in his mind and can see everything about them. From massive organ damage, to an oncoming aneurysm, to the slightest break in epiderm. He can tell if a person is truly crazy or is acting. Suicidal, depressed, etc. He has a compulsive need to help people. But to help them in most cases would mean his exposure. And besides, the cost is very high. He is capable of healing his own body of nearly any injury provided he has enough fuel and time. We assume decapitation would be impossible, but other than that...” Faul’s voice trailed off. I sat forward and poked him.

“And this is pertinent to me because...”I already knew, there could be only one reason he was telling me all this. But I wanted him to explain more.

Faul’s attention snapped back to me. “Healing, of any sort drains more than his physical resources. If the job is large enough he can come back resembling, in many ways, a vegetable. There is no way of measuring how long he will remain in that state. We don’t know why his Talent is so hard on him with some things and not with others, the only type of pattern seems to be that things involving the mind rather than the body are dependably worse. As he has aged, the toll of restraining himself has pretty much destroyed any polish he might have once had. He is barely twenty three now, he came to us when he was sixteen. He prefers to be alone for understandable reasons.

He is also marginally prescient. In immediate circumstances where someone may be physically injured, he can usually see it before it happens. That is the only situation that his prescience works in apparently. Not someone announcing a genocide, but a glass shattering on someone’s foot.”

“Or a bullet entering skin.” I stated flatly. At least part of Ravae’s skill the day before, sorry, five days before, was explained. If he could sense where the bullets would be before they were even fired he could have strolled past the guards blindfolded and emerged without a scratch. “So he swapped my body? Just like that?”

“Pretty much. I wasn’t going to ask him, but you were dying and your potential worth outweighed the possible results of failure. I had him try it, and he succeeded. Here you are.” Faul had his “I’m the boss, don’t question me” face back on.

“And here I am. Will he die?”

“We don’t have any real medical facilities here. When he is in this state he’s blocked to Talent, we aren’t even sure there’s any brain activity going on. This is a safe house belonging to a sympathetic and eccentric member of the upper class. The lady has gone to visit her sister in Asia. Now that I think of it, do not go outside for any reason. Not in the yard, not on the balconies. Keep all windows and doors closed. We have three days until there is a window of time in which we will move to another site with better facilities. There are several injuries that need to be looked at by the more thoroughly trained, thankfully none of them life threatening.”

I crossed my legs under the robe, settling more firmly into my seat. Back to the matter at hand. “I would like to hear more about Ravae, Faul. You mentioned ‘problems’ I might look for. What was that about?”

“Ravae has never attempted to do anything like that before. He wasn’t even sure he could. You were so close to death on the Lift. He laid one hand on your chest, and one hand on your head. Then he collapsed across both bodies. We weren’t sure what to do, you see. He has told us repeatedly that separating him from his focus is dangerous when he is trying to heal them. So we carried all three of you into the securest room of the house, no mean feat considering we had to keep you in flesh contact, and left you there. Kizza’s heart stopped about fifteen minutes later and we dealt with the corpse shortly afterwards. We did our best to force water into you two and tried to otherwise leave you alone. Around three a.m. yesterday Ravae staggered into the vid room and collapsed on the couch without a word. Today you joined us.

“And the problems?” I was starting to get impatient with Faul. I didn’t want to, he had obviously had a rough week, but if he didn’t stop evading my questions I was not going to be responsible for the results.

“Sometimes the people he heals have, well, I suppose ‘flashbacks’ is the closest word. Especially from severe injuries. They remember bits of his life. Sometimes very vividly. It isn’t really a big thing and goes away in a week or so. To the best of my knowledge he has never taken so long to heal someone. I don’t know what may occur.”

That was charming. But I was alive, and apparently I owed it to a man I would have said didn’t even like me much. At great personal cost. It could also explain my first impression of him. One more question and I’d let Faul make his much desired escape. “If he is so driven to heal, how can he fight, how can he kill?”

Faul let out a deep sigh, “I was afraid you would ask that. His answer was that it was none of my business. All I know is that I have seen him battle his way coldly through gutter fights that leave me white faced in the telling, leaving his path strewn with bodies: broken, dying. And I have seen him almost shattered with pain at having to leave enemy injured behind while we made our escape. I don’t know much more about him Raquell. Ask him yourself, he might even answer you.” It was clearly a dismissal and I was prepared to take it as one.

“Thank you Faul. I just may do that. Now,” I leaned down so our faces were level, “go to bed!” I was relived to hear his tired chuckle follow me as I laboriously climbed back up the stairs in search of a hot shower and clothes.

I’m going to go to bed. They moved Ravae back up here for me. I’m not sure, and not sure I want to know, why I feel more comfortable with him here. I just know I couldn’t sleep with him elsewhere.

It has been seven days since the mission now, and except for that one night, he hasn’t so much as sighed. We poured more water into him. When we get out of here tomorrow evening Faul says we have to start finding a way to feed him as well. There never was so much as a hint of what occurred at that facility in the news.

I have decided to join the rebellion. There really isn’t anything else for me to do now. Faul wants me to work with another group, one that does most of the central planning. There is a reason they call it a “organized rebellion” after all. He is going to make inquiries, and if all goes well, after I’ve been locked in, I get to meet my new family. It’s the section that Dean is part of. Faul told me that the little brat had actually suggested it, apparently Deans hot stuff now. He is also putting in to have Ravae transferred, assuming he recovers. I told Faul he would, but I’m not sure why. Ravae and I are going to have a long, and considering his disposition, loud, talk when he wakes up about all this. Until then I guess I’ll just lay around contemplating my new life.

Danger and intrigue. Exhaustion and fear.

Sounds like a party to me.