<b>Roo'd</b>

# Roo'd

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# Chapter #26

Fede woke sprawled out on the couch in the back of the truck. It wasn’t moving. He could see Cessus’s elbow from where he sat, saw his lenses flash as he turned and muttered something to Marcus. He sat up, wincing at the crick in his back. His head ached, but he no longer felt quite as much like dying. A light rain pattered against the windscreen, the sky a bruised purplish-blue.

“Is it morning?” he called out.

“Night” said Cessus, turning to look back at him. “How you doing?”

Fede unwrapped himself from the fleece and socketed his legs on, wincing at the dark flesh where he’d twisted the socket. The hospital-issues weren’t meant for anything athletic, weren’t really meant for anything. There were better legs out there, made for actual comfort and running and such. But they didn’t look real. They looked mod.

He crawled up to the front of the cab. They were in a rest stop somewhere, darkened forest stretching out on either side of them.

“Where’s Cass?” he asked.

“Getting coffee” said Marcus. The big man was quiet, his eyes staring at something beyond the horizon out ahead of him. Cessus coughed once, lightly.

“Ah, Feed. We should talk a little business here” he said. He was watching Marcus.

Fede said nothing.

“We just got our house burnt down. Marcus here lost a lot of equipment. He’s got a fight coming in another month and needs training, not to mention his supplements. Me, I don’t care so much other than the house. But still...”

A silence filled the cab.

“What’re you saying?” asked Fede.

“We need to know what we’re getting for putting our asses on the line for you and your brother” said Marcus.

“Oh” said Fede.

“It just seems like we ought to know what the conditions are here. I’m happy to help you out, you know, just for the adventure like, but my man here” Cessus clapped a hand on Marcus’s huge biceps “he’s got to consider skipping the fight to help you out. And it’s better for his career to take the fight.”

Fede sat back on his haunches. Something seeped out of him, some strength he didn’t realize he had had before.

“All we need to know is the terms of our agreement, Feed” said Marcus. “That’s just biz.”

“I’ll have to ask Tonx” said Fede.

“Sure” said Cessus. “Sure. No problem.”

Cass knocked on the truck window.

“Here’s your coffee” she said, handing Cessus the tall Styrofoam cups on a press form cardboard tray. It flexed dangerously as Cessus balanced it over his lap, pulling one out for Marcus.

“You want to get one for flyboy here?” asked Cessus, waving a thumb at Fede.

“S’okay” he said. “I’ll get it myself.”

He crawled past Cessus and shuffled out the door, the cold wind outside waking him up a little. He limped around the front of the truck, the hood shuddering slightly as the door closed behind him.

“Why do you have those old legs?” asked Cass. “You could get a nice pair of carbon-fibers, at least. Maybe a springboard set. I know a guy...”

“I don’t want that” interrupted Fede. “These are fine.”

He shuffled towards the rest stop, the click-hiss of his ankles clear in the cold air.

Cass shrugged, followed.

There was an ancient cred card reader duct-taped to the top of the table next to the tall silver coffee dispensers. Hand-painted signs advertising the Boy’s and Girl’s club’s latest project, a new baseball field, were propped up around the thin plastic tablecloth. He let the steaming trickle fill his cup, held it in both hands, feeling the heat.

Cass reached over him and grabbed a sugar cube, dropped it in her own cup. Steam curled up and around her face, a dirty smudge lining one nostril. Fede turned and looked out over the forest, at the fading light through the cloud breaks beyond.

He walked down the covered length of the rest stop, under the chap-board walkway to the picnic tables, their legs encased in the cement. Cass’s boots made soft scuffling noises behind him. They sat next to each other on the table, hunched over their knees, feet on the warped seat benches. He ran one finger over the smooth pink line where his ancient tennis shoes had worn away the flesh-colored paint on the plastic of his foot.

“They want a cut” said Fede. “Want a contract.”

“Huh” said Cass. “Makes sense.”

“I guess” said Fede.

“You guess? They just got their house burnt down. Marcus has a fucking dent in his head. Fucking Disney is after our ass. Of course they want a cut, Feed.”

He turned at looked at her, admired her big brown eyes, the curve of her cheekbones.

“Fuck you” he said. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t yell. He just said it, calmly. She raised one eyebrow.

“Oh?”

“You’ve got your cut. What do you care?”

“It’s my ass, too, Feed. And they’re my friends.”

“So? Go hang with your friends, then.”

She sat back a little, swirled her coffee.

“What’s with the attitude?”

“What’s with yours? You’ve been harshing on me since we met. Now all I have is a couple guys I thought I could trust and a brother who’s out who-knows-where with big business types trying to kill him. Kill us. I can’t go home because they might be tracing me and I can’t go anywhere else, either. Now I’ve got to buy myself some protection with money I don’t have and hope we pull something off.”

Cass took a long pull on her coffee.

“Okay” she said.

“Okay what?” he asked.

“Okay, it’s a tough situation. But those guys are just looking out for themselves same as you would. You can’t blame them for that. It doesn’t mean they don’t like you.”

He rolled the coffee cup in his hands, felt its half-empty weight. He tossed it into a garbage can.

“Whatever” he mumbled.

“I miss him too, Feed” said Cass. Her dark hair drew across her face in the breeze, the cold air prickling the back of his neck down his collar.

She stood up. “C’mon. If we’re going to do anything we need to get you coding.”

She tossed her coffee in the big garbage can next to the table, stopped and waited a moment on the path.

“Come on, it’s fucking cold out here.”

They walked back to the truck, Cessus jumping out of the passenger side to let them in.

“Got good news, folks” he said. “Tonx called while you were out, got himself a secured comm. He’s okay despite the mouse’s best attempts and we’ve discussed terms. Feed, copies are on your comm if you’d like to look at them — nothing’s official until you sign off. If they’re okay we’ve got a new target where we’re going to meet up with Tonx and get ourselves some data to play with.”

Cass grunted from the back seat, pulled the blanket over herself.

Fede pulled his gogs on, signed in and scanned the new files. It made no sense whatsoever to him, obtuse legalese sprinkled with LPJ, Local Private Jargon certified legal for the participants. The contract would act to shield them from each other should they get caught breaking international laws — would tie their lawyer’s hands from laying the blame in one individual in the group. It would also provide the illusion of uncertainty that what they were doing was against the law, and hopefully give them some wiggle room in an international court. If they made it work their results ought to be worth enough money to leverage the contract into some kind of legally protected status under one of the corporate states. It would also guarantee everyone their fair share of the profits, if there were any. He punched in his key string and zipped the document, looked on the local Pan and dropped it onto Cessus’s comm.

“Thanks man” said Cessus. “Just a formality, you know?”

“No hard feelings, Feed” rumbled Marcus. He reached across himself with one huge hand, folded it over Fede’s own in a street grip, thumbs crossed. “I’ll be with you until we meet up with Tonx. We’ll see what comes after that.”

He turned back and fired up the engine, pulled the seat belt taut and clicked it in place.

“Who knows” he said, dark eyes glimmering, “maybe we’ll get to have more fun together yet.”

He and Cessus started chuckling.

They drove.

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