The Ballad of Verdene Molloy Ch. 06

"No," said Verde. "Well, I was doing a friend a favour, okay? A guy I'd run with before asked me to take his nephew on a job. The kid seemed all right, but he was a total noob and when he was busted he sang. So they let him go and took me."

"Okay," said Kathy. "That's interesting. So tell me what happened."

"It's kind of embarrassing. I met a girl in Intake. She was upset. Rich girl, crashed daddy's car, you believe that? They gave her up for that. Anyway I fell for her. She was very beautiful, to be fair. I looked after her and once she'd settled down we were happy, but then she got ideas to be with someone higher status in the wing, so she hooked up with this Draco woman. Joko Wisbech. Don't know if you know her. She did muscle for the Slovenians. Probably still does."

Kathy shook her head. Of course not, Verde thought, all the criminals you know probably teach postgraduate courses in Frontiers of Villainy.

"Well," said Verde, embarrassed, "I lost it. I tried to get her back. I confronted them. To be fair, I did fuck one of them up. I threw hot oil over a girl in the food queue. One of Joko's bitches."

"That old stunt," said Kathy. "They can fix that in a couple of hours now."

"I know, but it's still painful. Anyway, so they did this to me."

"What exactly did they do," said Kathy, having another sip of her drink. Verde blinked.

"What you want to know . . . exactly?"

"The more I know," said Kathy, "the more I might be able to help you."

"Right," said Verde. Thinking about it was hard. It had been impossible when she had the Jimney. Now it was merely hugely uncomfortable.

"They raped me," she mumbled.

"No need to be ashamed of it," said Kathy.

"Why not?" said Verde. "It's fucking shaming. Have you ever been raped?"

She stared down at Kathy, who lay in the bath, looking blank.

"No," Kathy said at last.

"So," said Verde.

She gulped at her drink.

"It was pretty standard for a Draconian and her crew," she said. "We were in the showers anyway, so they didn't have to strip me. Joko fucked me up against the wall. Then she took my ass. Then, while she was still doing that, she turned her crew on me and they saw to the rest of me for a while, and one of them fisted me, and while she was doing that Joko fisted my asshole, and a Draconian, y'know, they have really big hands, so . . . They made my girl watch this, of course, Lissy was her name. It was for her benefit. And because I'd offended Joko."

Verde was silent for a while. She felt Kathy's eyes on her.

"Then they shaved me all over. All my hair, off. Then Joko pissed on me. That's how it happened with the skin and the hair. Draconian piss, and so on. It's . . . radioactive, or some shit. Then after she'd done it they all did it. I think nearly everyone on the wing. I seemed to make nothing but enemies there. Which pretty much sealed the old dealie-o as regards my melanin, because I was practically flayed by that point."

Verde stopped, had a big gulp of her drink and continued.

"I see," said Kathy.

"And then they got the knives out."

"Knives."

"For the tattooing," said Verde. "Dracos use knives and some other thing, not needles so much."

"How did that go."

"I don't know," Verde said. "I was in so much pain by that point that I passed out."

"Oh," said Kathy. "Pity. And had you ever been raped before."

"Uh, yes," said Verde.

"When. What happened."

"I was eighteen. I was having my pre-legal drinks. Some guy in the bar kept hitting on me and eventually I told him he was a loser and never in a million years, et cetera, and when I left the bar hours later he was out there."

"What did he do."

"He hit me over the head and dragged me into a parking garage, and beat the shit out of me and stripped me and then he raped me."

"Did you fear for your life."

Verde sat, clutching her drink, staring at the floor.

"Yes."

"Any idea why he didn't kill you."

"Someone came along."

"Someone you knew."

"Yeah."

"What way did the guy rape you."

Verde looked at Kathy for a long moment.

What the fuck?

Kathy looked back at her, coolly.

"The normal way. He stuck his cock in my cunt."

"Nothing else."

"No."

"Did you think he wanted to."

"Oh yeah. He was all set to take the back door when they came along."

"And have there been other times."

"Yeah," said Verde.

"Other occasions you've been raped."

"Yeah.

"What happened."

"In prison," Verde said, her voice steady. "After the Draconians. The warden. I was strapped down so I couldn't fight. I couldn't stop him. But I managed to video the whole thing. It was the main part of my case against the prison. The warden raping me. And at the trial he was gonna walk away but for whatever reason he went nuts and fired a gun at me and I lost my eye. So that happened too. And there've been other times as well, okay, Kathy?"

"Okay," said Kathy, "you're upset."

"Fuck, Kathy," said Verde, and she put her drink down and stood up and went over to the sink. She put her face in her hands for a long moment and didn't move. Then she grabbed a towel and wiped at the tears that had been streaming down her face for several minutes. "Fucking shit. You are a piece of work."

"I can see this is hard for you."

"Ya think?" Verde shouted, fresh tears coming to her eyes. "I haven't thought about this in a long time. I've never really talked about this to anyone. I don't even like thinking about this. Why are you asking for every fucking detail?"

"I need to see where you break," said Kathy. "Where you're most vulnerable. If I don't know that, I can't trust you. And I want to trust you."

"I don't know if I want to trust you," said Verde. "Not if you're this much of a cunt."

"I'm not trying to be a cunt," said Kathy in her eternal flat, level voice. "I do care what happened to you."

"What do you give a shit what happened to me?" Verde sobbed. "You're half a fucking robot. Inside you're all fucking robot."

There was a silence.

"Verdene," said Kathy slowly, "I know I don't seem like I care. I can't put it into my voice. But I do care."

"Well, that sounds great," Verde muttered, wiping her face. "A robot cares about me."

"I'm not a robot," said Kathy. "I'm a slightly enhanced human. Listen to me, Verdene."

Kathy grasped the sides of the bath and got to her feet, water dripping off her body, and she held out a hand. Verde slowly came over and Kathy put her hand on Verde's shoulder and looked in her eyes.

"If I were ever to run into the people who did that to you," Kathy said, "I would make them regret it for the rest of their lives. As long as you work with me, nobody will ever be able to do anything to you that you don't want. You know what I can do. I can kill anybody I can get close to. But if you work with me, I will always protect you. Always. Are we understood."

Verde looked at her and wondered, not for the first time, what exactly Kathy had meant when she'd called Verde an 'asset'.

"Okay," she said at last, "but . . . get back in the bath."

"Why."

"Because you have a great body, and it's distracting me," said Verde, wiping her eyes and smiling.

Kathy smiled, very briefly. It was like the sun peeking through the clouds on a winter's day.

"Okay," she said. "I just want to understand who you're dealing with."

She stepped back and stiffly eased herself into the bath again. Verde realised with a pang of compassion that it must have cost Kathy a good deal to stand up and sit down before her body was ready to do so.

"Anyway," Verde said, "as far as the first guy is concerned, you don't need to protect me from him."

"Why not," said Kathy.

"Because when I'd recovered, I went back to the bar and tracked him down and persuaded him that I'd forgiven him and that I'd been kinda turned on by what he did to me. We went back to the parking garage, and I hit him with a wrench and smashed his jaw so hard they couldn't find all the bits. That's why he doesn't have a jaw now. That's one of the few times I've got seriously bangy on anyone, because I enjoyed it just a bit too much."

"That's good to know," said Kathy, with a hint of amusement.

The oven pinged. Kathy's face lit up again, for a brief second.

"Food," she said. She turned it around and pressed a button, and the oven door opened and there were two trays. Kathy grabbed one and handed it to Verde, then took the other one, peeled the foil off and began to eat ravenously.

Verde peeled the foil off hers. Inside was some sort of mushy brown stuff which smelled of meat, and another thing of mushy green stuff that smelled of vegetables, and some mushy yellow stuff that she correctly identified as some kind of mashed root vegetable thing.

"What the fuck is this?" she said.

"It's food," said Kathy. "I'm starving."

"It's the factory preset food," said Verde. "If you want it to be nice, you have to actually dial in something so it makes it look like real food! You've just got it set on zero-zero!"

"Oh, I never have time for that," said Kathy. "As long as it's food, I'm fine."

"I can't eat this shit!" said Verde. "This is like, for babies."

"What's it matter," said Kathy through a mouthful of food.

"Where's the freaking manual?" said Verde. "If I'm gonna travel with you, we're gonna eat actual food."

"Great," said Kathy, shovelling more food into herself. "That's one thing you can take care of."

"So come on," said Verde. "You didn't take me with you so you'd have someone to program your oven. What did you mean when you said I was an asset?"

Kathy stopped chewing for a moment, then resumed.

"Okay," she said, "I'll be honest. I admit it, at first it was your tattoos. The idea of having someone with me who could always distract people just by being naked was very attractive."

"What?!" said Verde, outraged.

"But I don't think that now," said Kathy. "Don't worry. Apart from the fact that I've come to like you too much to do something like that to you, I think you have much more potential than you realise. And I suspect that that thing," she said, indicating the Jimney, "is a lot more interesting and useful than you know."

"The fucking Jimney?" Verde said. "I'm getting rid of it. I'm not going through all that again."

"Is that what you call it." said Kathy. "Hm. I would advise you not to, yet. We're gonna have to look at that. But in the meantime, you have definite disadvantages. You're way too conspicuous, for a start. We'll need to find good solutions for your skin and your hair, so you can go unnoticed."

"I'd kind of like to have my eyes looked at," Verde said. "The fake one's really shit. I could use a better one."

"Well," said Kathy, putting down her tray and reaching for a small plastic case on the edge of the bath, "when it comes to eyes, everyone can use an upgrade."

She lowered her head, put up one finger and took out one contact lens, then another, and placed them carefully in the box. Then she looked up at Verde.

Kathy's eyes were artificial. But not the cheap kind. These looked custom-made. The black pupils were surrounded by iridescent swirls of colour on a black background. They shifted like smoke and occasionally locked into formal patterns, possibly as some kind of targeting thing, possibly just because Kathy could make them do that. Verde was delighted to see that Kathy was fighting back a smug smile.

"That is so fucking cool," Verde breathed.

"I think we need to get you some," said Kathy.