Sunblind Serpent: The Zodiac Without A House

The medic had been working on the officer’s jacket for two minutes. He had made no progress.

”I’m fine.”

”Your shoulder is sitting three centimetres lower than the other one.”

”That’s how it always sits.”

”It wasn’t like that an hour ago. I checked.”

The officer let the jacket come off. Marek suspected that had nothing to do with being persuaded. The man wanted the argument to end.

The Taurus Mark ran up the side of his neck in dull gold. The skin around it had gone the color of a week-old bruise.

He had spent the night deciding how hard to touch things. Every door. Every person he moved out of the way. Every time he raised the weapon without gripping it hard enough to bend the frame.

Marek had assumed that was training.

Watching him now, it looked more like fear.

Behind them, two medics were folding Cooper into the ambulance.

”Possible fracture,” Cooper announced to nobody. ”Possible soft tissue. They need imaging.”

”So they do not know.”

”Yes, Marek. They don’t know.”

”Good.”

”Why is that good?”

”They did not pretend to.”

Clara had come to stand beside the open doors. ”You really like it when people admit they’re uncertain.”

”Yes.”

The supervisor was talking to a driver beside the armored transport.

The transport was what mattered. Marek had been counting vehicles since backup arrived. Four security units. One ambulance. One transport with a sealed rear compartment and no windows.

The ambulance would take Cooper. The transport would take the rest of them to a classification desk. Once they arrived they would be separated. Every facility on the planet had spent the night learning to do that.

Whatever he was going to learn about the other three, he had until that driver finished talking.

Henry stood near the damaged lead vehicle with both arms folded. He was at the exact distance a man keeps from a machine he does not trust.

The coolant line had stopped hissing an hour ago. The cables under the folded hood had not stopped doing anything.

His blue scale brightened.

Marek was already moving. ”Away from the front.”

Henry was already moving too. He had started first.

Two seconds later a spark crossed between two pieces of torn metal. The streetlight above them stuttered and came back.

Nobody else in the intersection noticed.

”How far ahead was that?” Marek asked.

”What?”

”You moved before the spark. So did the scale.”

Henry turned his forearm over. The blue had already faded to almost nothing. ”It does that. Gets warm before I’ve worked out why.”

”Warm.”

”Warm and pressing. Like a hand.” He frowned at his own arm. ”First time it’s done that.”

”What did it tell you?”

”Nothing. It isn’t telling me anything.” Henry stopped. He started again, more slowly. It was the voice of a man describing his work. ”When I service a system, I can tell when something is about to fail. Not from one reading. From the whole thing being wrong in a way I’ve seen before.”

He looked up.

”That. But in my arm. It knows what’s like the thing I’m already carrying.”

Marek considered it. ”Words?”

”What words?”

There it was.

”Clara.” Marek did not turn around. ”When the green one reacted at the spill. Did anything appear in front of you?”

”Appear how?”

”Text. Numbers. A warning.”

”No.” She had come closer without being asked. ”It went cold. That was all. I think you already asked us this before.”

”Yes, but only a cold feeling?”

”At first.”

Marek waited.

”Then I knew that whatever was hurting her wasn’t part of her.” Clara chose the words carefully. She was not avoiding them. ”I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know how much there was. I didn’t know if it was on her coat, or her skin, or already in her lungs.”

”But you knew it could come off her.”

”Yes.”

”That is not what Henry gets.”

”No. It isn’t.”

Marek turned it over.

Same Sign. The same thirteen broken scales on all four of them.

Henry had spent nineteen years inside systems that fail in patterns. His Mark recognized patterns.

Clara had spent her career in rooms where the poison and the patient are two separate objects. Her Mark separated things.

Ophiuchus had not taught either of them anything.

It had let them keep what they already knew.

That meant the interface was not the Sign either.

The medic had given up on the officer. He had moved on to somebody who would cooperate. The officer had put his jacket back on over the shoulder that sat three centimetres too low.

Marek crossed to him. ”Take that off again.”

”I’ve done this.”

”You have done it badly. Sit down.”

The officer did not sit down. He stopped walking. For this man that was the same gesture.

Marek put two fingers against the outside of the shoulder joint.

The noise of the intersection began moving away.

[SUBJECT IDENTIFIED.]

[CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT ESTABLISHED.]

The officer’s body opened into dim outlines under his hand.

It was not what Marek had expected. He had to look at it for several seconds before he understood.

There was no single injury.

There were forty.

Every place the man’s own strength had gone through his own frame. Torn fibers at both shoulders. Bone bruising along the right forearm. A hairline separation at the collarbone. Small hemorrhages in the muscle of both hands.

None of it had been done to him.

All of it was the cost of eleven hours spent holding back a body that had stopped reporting how hard it pushed.

[CONDITION DETECTED.]

[PROGRESSIVE STRUCTURAL DAMAGE. SELF-INFLICTED.]

[CAUSE: UNCALIBRATED SECOND SIGN.]

[ISOLATION POSSIBLE.]

[SUITABLE VESSEL REQUIRED.]

Marek stayed inside the Quiet Room longer than he needed to.

Twelve empty scales. He did not know how to empty a full one. Nothing had told him it was possible.

That meant twelve was not a supply. It was a total.

The officer would not die of this. He would be examined at whatever facility they were about to be driven to. Somebody would immobilize the shoulder. In six weeks, he would be most of the way back.

Unless he used the arm before then.

He would. Four Geminis were loose in this city with two stolen radios. This man was not going to sit down.

Twelve.