"Yes," she hugged him tightly, wanting to heal him. Wanting to be as strong and powerful as he believed her to be. As she always could have been, if just given the chance to be herself. "Together."
Angel in Flight
by Sarah A. Hoyt
When he heard the sirens and understood their meaning, Jarl knew he was going to die.
He closed his eyes, then opened them again. He looked down at his hands, in the gray fingerless gloves, holding the circuits for the holo advertisements that flashed high on either side of the zipway, right above him, where he straddled the zipway wall. Beneath him flyers zipped, end on end, hundreds of miles an hour, towards Friedstadt and Eastern Europe beyond.
The zipway bisected Europe east to west and the speeds and closeness of vehicles were only possible because driving had been turned over to a series of control towers. The passengers in the flyers had nothing to do but read the advertisements, until the zipway exited them at their chosen destination.
His fingers were a purplish blue, the result of the biting cold of this December night. His body felt just as cold, of course, insufficiently protected by the baggy gray tunic that billowed in the snow-laden wind. And the knit pants that molded his skinny legs below weren’t much help, either. At least he’d put on two pairs of—borrowed—socks, beneath the thin slippers, which were all Hoffnungshaus ever gave its inmates. Which meant he could sort of feel his feet, and was probably not at risk of losing a toe or three.
In fairness to Hoffnungshaus, Jarl had to admit the inmates weren’t ever supposed to leave Hoffnungshaus. Though he did, of course. And paid the price. He shrugged his sharp shoulder blades under the tunic, feeling again the sting of the last whipping.
That was no matter. Nor were any other penalties associated with leaving Hoffnungshaus, nor even what they might do to his roommates, Bartolomeu and Xander, for having let him out yet again. No.
Despite the cold, he felt sweat rolling down his forehead towards his eyes, and wiped it with the back of his sleeve.
None of that mattered. Not his infraction in leaving Hoffnungshaus. Not how they might punish Bartolomeu and Xander. Nothing mattered because Jarl would be dead before morning.
He looked down at his fingers in the open circuit box, purple fingers against the blue, green and red wires, and the snowflakes drifting in.
Above him, the holo ad remained unchanged. He knew, from analyzing it, that it advertised the resort just up the zipway, at the next exit, from this spot. Eden Cavern, it was called, and he had no idea what it was like except for the advertising line that ran in cool green holographic letters, A taste of paradise.
He couldn’t see the holograph—not the whole of it, at least—from where he sat. It was a mere shimmer of colors and disconnected dots, meant to be read from the zipway itself, as flyers zoomed by at hundreds of miles per hour. It was only through fast math that he could see, in his mind, clear as day, what it would look like and say to the people below. And he’d be a cyborg if he had the slightest idea why a resort used a naked woman wrapped in a serpent and holding up an apple as an advertisement.
Perhaps they have prostitutes, he thought. And then the siren went again, and another series of sirens, and over the zipway, but facing him a long distance away—which meant he could read it even from where he was, a holographic sign showed, deep red against the black of the snowy night:
Break from Freiwerk. All exits past Eden Cavern are closed. Traffic in the zipway will be stopped. Every flyer will be examined. For your safety cooperate with the authorities.
Shit, I am so dead. His mind formed the words clearly. His body refused to get the message. Even as he thought the words, his numbed fingers were closing the control box on the wall, not bothering this time with re-locking the genlock he’d hacked into, just slamming it shut to prevent more snow from getting in. There was no point in wanton destruction.
He felt at his waistband for his stolen burner, then looked towards the zipway, where flyers were slowly coming to a stop, starting at the distant horizon. The other way were dark fields, a couple of country roads, a golf course, a hunting preserve, and ten miles off, as straight as Jarl could run, Hoffnungshaus, where he would be missed as soon as head count was done at dawn. If he could get to it, he would be protected. Getting to it was the problem. What “break from Freiwerk” meant was that mules had rioted again, and a few of them had managed to escape the fortified work-camp. And if the authorities thought even one among them might be able to pass as a normal human, they would be looking at everyone’s hands.
Jarl’s fingerless gloves stopped just short of the bright red band embedded in the skin of the ring finger on his left hand. The mark of a made human, an artifact. No different than the mules that had just escaped. In this sort of circumstances, he would be shot on sight. And that was if the mules didn’t get him first. Creatures manufactured as slaves, created to serve humans all their lives, were remarkably lacking in fellow feeling. And even if they could understand Jarl’s own situation, they’d probably feel zero empathy with him.