Transcendent 2 Read online

  “Listen,” she said. “I’m concerned that you’re losing blood. Your helmet’s gone red.”

  I guess I was lucky to have the injury-prev helmet instead of the HUD.

  “We have to get out of here, but I don’t think you’re going to make a walk down Main Street,” Agatha said. “Not before anyone comes by.”

  “There was a fire escape from the second floor down into the alley. I saw it when we were being brought in,” John said. Of course John said. I should’ve said; I’d seen the damn thing when I was sneaking past, watching for revs hiding in the alleys. But I was messed up, and John and her damn beard were the ones taking charge.

  God, I wished Isaac was there. But that gunshot crossed my mind, and I wanted to spew. Isaac was dead. I was the guardsman left, and I was being babied by a bunch of girls.

  “Then that’s where we’ll go,” Agatha said. “Come on; everyone back this way. Move it, all of you. John…”

  John stepped up and got me under the arm to hold me up, and I yanked away. Shoved her and stumbled right into the toilet paper. Real smooth. But I didn’t want her hands on me.

  “I can stand up,” I said, when they looked at me. My face was burning, but the rest of me was cold.

  Agatha looked at me. Probably going to ask if I had a problem with the gender-reassigned, but I just took my rifle, pushed myself up, and concentrated on keeping steady. Were it that easy.

  “I can walk,” I told her again, and turned around and started walking.

  The second floor was offices and a break room, and that’s where we headed. Longest stair climb of my life. But with the shooting over and the adrenaline quieting down, it wasn’t as bad—about as bad as sneaking to the store in the first place. We went into the break room, where the revs had left bags of trash and bowls from instant meals, empty bottles of alcohol, and a map of the city tacked up on the walls. Agatha turned up her nose. “Well, I suppose we know where they’ve been spending their time.”

  John went to the window and pushed it open. I went up to take a look, see if I needed to secure the alley below.

  We weren’t far up, and the fire escape was a good one—wasn’t rickety or anything. But I looked and I heard myself say “Shit,” and then I was back inside the window, on my knees, spewing lunch and molasses water into a trash can full of old receipts. Even after everything came up, I kept heaving until the vise in my head let go. My heart started pounding again.

  I wasn’t going to get out of there.

  I swallowed, and wished I hadn’t. Looked back at the girls, and saw John and Agatha kneeling near me. Before they could say anything I told them, “Look, it’s about five blocks to the barricades, and none of you look like revs. Just get down the side and go for it. Keep your hands up and no one’s gonna shoot you. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll see them through,” Agatha said, then frowned. “Here; you’d better give me your sidearm.”

  “What?” I squinted until she focused back into one solid person instead of two blurry ones. “I will get my ass raked over the coals if I hand a pistol to someone who’s never had gun training. There must be ten different laws against that.”

  “Tell them I stole it off you while you were throwing up,” Agatha said. “Or do you want us just to sing if a rioter comes by?”

  I squinted at her. “What?”

  “It’s what you do for bears,” John said.

  Fancy educated bastard. I groaned and put my head back. “Fine. Take it.” I was just gonna close my eyes. And then I felt myself falling, in the back of my head, like all that darkness under my eyelids was some river, with an undertow, and I’d sink down through. Then I felt hot hands on my face and John pried open my eyes.

  There she was, staring me in the face and yammering on about a concussion and hyposomething. I tried to wave her off like a horsefly. Then she said, “We talked it over. I’m going to stay with you.”

  No idea when they’d had time to talk it over. I laughed in John’s face. “Why, ’cause you’re the butch?”

  “Because Agatha has more important things to do,” John said, and I thought, Yeah, like my job.

  “Lemme up,” I said.

  “Agatha’s going to get everyone back to base,” John said. “She’s going to tell the rest of City Guard where we are, and they should be able to get someone in here to bring you out.”

  What I should’ve done in the first place. “I can make it,” I said. “In my own time, yeah?”

  Agatha did just what she should have: came over and crouched down and said, “Don’t be an idiot. I’ll break both your knees if you think you’re going to crawl out, pass out, and make us carry you.”

  I liked her. Kinda wished she would stay with me. Not just that John torqued me, but I had a feeling Agatha could take on the entire rev mob with guts to spare.

  The girls filed out the window, and I heard their feet going down the metal stairs. John went and closed the door, and turned all the lights off. Better for my head, at least. Then she came and sat by me.

  “You don’t like me much,” she said.

  I rubbed a sleeve across my mouth. “Does it matter?”

  John sighed. “I have been accused of not playing to the spirit of the GAT.”

  Were it that fucking simple.

  “Give me your hand,” John said. I squinted.

  “Why?”

  “Medical reasons.”

  I squinted a bit more, and gave her my hand.

  She took it and squeezed my thumbnail. Then she took my pulse. “Well, you haven’t lost much more blood,” she said, and let go of me. “Capillary refill’s no worse than it was, and heart rate is good, considering.” She shook her head. “You really shouldn’t have come after us.”

  I tried to think of something sharp to say. I was angry—angrier than I had any right to be. Tried to blame my head.

  “But thank you,” John said.

  Given the way the rev had been going after her—well, I know how these things go. Gender assessment gets people angry, anger gets people nasty. That’s why most of us keep our dirty little secrets under our belts and our vests. Why most of us don’t go wearing a damn beard.

  That just got me feeling sick.

  “What is it with you?” I asked, and looked at her. “Get a shave, put on some makeup, grow out your hair. You walk into a war zone and you come looking like that?”

  “Not my style,” John said.

  I looked her up and down. “How the hell did you test female?” I asked.

  John sighed. “Is this the conversation we’re going to have?” she asked, like she’d had this one before.

  Probably had. Probably every time someone had to talk to her. Make small talk. So, John, what’s up with your genitals? So, John, why you wanna be a girl?

  Didn’t want to be a proper girl, though.

  “You scored, what, a fifty-one fem, fifty masc on the GAT?” I asked. “Just enough to scrape through?”

  John looked at me. “Sounds like you’re familiar with the GAT.”

  “Yeah, familiar,” I said. “Took it. Tried to go army. But I got eighty-two masculine, and the goddamn military is eighty-five, min.” I flipped the convo around again, back at her. “You think you’re a man, don’t you?”

  She hedged. “I don’t think it’s useful to pay too much attention to—”

  “Bullshit. You think you’re a man?”

  John hesitated. Looking for any way not to answer the damn question, then answered it anyway. “Yeah, I do.”

  I sneered. “Thought so. Why the hell’d you do this? Getting some girls?”

  She gave me this long-suffering look. “I wanted to serve. I wanted to go into care. I didn’t have the stomach for armed service. I’ve thought a lot about why it was so important, and I don’t know how to explain it—”

  “So you’re a man,” I said. “You’re not just playing queer, you’re a man.”

  More hedging. “Well, legally I—”

  “You’re play
ing!” I almost shouted. I almost didn’t care who heard me. I was shaking, I couldn’t see straight. “You’re a fucking—yeah, you know what? I grew up in this. I was playing with—fuck you. Fuck you! You want to know what it’s really like?”

  John got a look like she’d worked something out.

  I hated that look. Straight up hated it.

  “I know what—” John said, or started to say.

  I ran right over her. Couldn’t stop, and Christos, I wanted to. “Ever since I was a kid. Sold my dolls on my parents’ net accounts. Thought I’d be able to get this toy gun—they forced me into a dress once and I nearly tore their eyes out, clawed up my mom’s face so bad, and every day I was sick when someone looked at my chugs or called me ma’am, and you’re fucking—”

  You’re a pretender, some sick trans-v playing in women’s clothing. I wanted to say that. Didn’t even care it was the same shit people used to fling at me.

  “I was a boy,” I spat out. “I had some chromosome problem but I knew what I was. This isn’t a joke.”

  “It’s not a joke for me,” John said.

  “No, it’s a goddamn disguise,” I said, leaned over, and puked again.

  John put her hand on my back and I shoved her away. I didn’t want to be touched. I spent my whole life up until the GAT and the surgery and the moving halfway across the country to Baxon having people say I’d grow out of this, like I’d grow out of my skin, be a normal girl, settle down with a normal guy, take those hands all over me, take him crawling on top of me, take him feeling better than me, stronger than me, like I’d take the whole five-course meal of what my life was supposed to look like and feel like and be shoved down my mouth the moment I was spewed out into the world, when some doctor looked between my legs and laid down the law on me. John’s little card with her GAT score meant nothing on all that.

  There’s a word for that. Dysphoria. I got my chugs lopped off, got my own little card that got me into the City Guard with the rest of the boys, got a good haircut and remedial hormones and that all helped, but not enough. The damn rev had a point: I got to be a guy because I took a test and it said I got into enough fights, played enough sports, had enough right interests and few enough wrong ones. I got to be a guy because some white-collar jackhole stamped and signed a form. I never would’ve got to be a guy just because I was a guy.

  John was quiet when I was done spewing. Then she said, “The only way I could’ve gotten this job was by acting, every day, like I was something I wasn’t.”

  The only way I got this job was by arguing my whole life I was who I was.

  “Do you think it makes sense?” John asked.

  “Yeah, funny thing is, no one ever asked me.”

  John was quiet. Then she said, “I hate it.”

  I looked at her. Didn’t know what she meant.

  “You can feel it,” John said. “How they look at you.”

  I grimaced. “Yeah,” I agreed. “How it goes sliding over you. Like they just look, and—”

  “And it’s not even—it’s a look that says ‘I know what you are,’” John said. “Like they’ve figured you out.”

  “And you can’t say no. You can’t—”

  “You just want to say, that’s not me!”

  I turned my head to look at her. Him. I looked at him. “Why do you put up with this shit?” I said. “Just get another goddamn job.”

  He watched me with blank hazel eyes. “Why didn’t you just wear the goddamn dress?”

  I twisted around and punched him.

  I split his lip on his teeth. If I hadn’t been wearing gloves I’d’ve split my knuckle on his teeth. He jerked back and spat blood, and gave me the kind of look people give bad wiring.

  After a while, I said, “Sorry.”

  John wiped a glob of blood off his lips. “I had brothers,” he said. “I’ll survive.”

  “I meant—” I waved a hand. “Sorry for the other stuff. Pulling you out of the queue.”

  John was quiet for a moment. “You were just doing your job.”

  “So was the guy who said I wasn’t man enough to be in the army.” I ground my fingernails into my fist. “I just—this is shit, what they make us do.”

  Wasn’t much to say, after that.

  I closed my eyes and tried to keep the headache down. John got up and walked to the window, looked out at the alley and the street. Then I heard him take breath in.

  “Someone’s coming.”

  I opened my eyes. “That our boys?”

  John was standing way too still, and his shoulders came up toward his ears. “No,” he said.

  Revs.

  I pulled myself up on the windowsill, and John grabbed my arm to keep me standing. I couldn’t see—headache made it hard—but John said, “There. Three, coming for the front entrance.”

  Where they’d find Isaac. They’d find that dead rev. They’d look and wonder where their hostages got to, and they’d come up here to plan. I cussed and reached for the window, and John stopped my hand.

  “Are you going to make it down?”

  I didn’t look out. Figured that if I went with my eyes closed, I wouldn’t lose it. “We have a choice?”

  “You get sick on the stairs and they’ll hear you,” John said. “We’ll be easy marks in that alley. We can find somewhere to hide, let the guard flush them out.”

  I groaned. “Where, like the girls’ bathroom?”

  John shrugged. “Good as anywhere.”

  He got me under the arm and we went to the door, quiet as possible. We slipped through, just as quiet, and someone yelled “Hey!” from the stairs.

  John hadn’t seen the first bunch of revs to come home.

  There was maybe a second where the rev just saw John’s dress, and most people leave medical types alone. Never know when one might save your bacon, even if you are on the wrong side. Then he saw me, though, and the one thing the revs hated as much as appointed officials was City Guard.

  He probably put together who’d shot his pal, too.

  Pride might get me killed, but twitchy kept me alive. I shot from the hip, literally, didn’t kill the guy but came close, and the other revs started shouting downstairs.

  I remember thinking something about high ground. I remember my helmet fitting too tight, watching myself like a live-action movie, like I was outside my head, stumbling down the stairs and crashing down under cover behind the pulp books. I shot one guy in the chest because I don’t think he believed what was happening—damn revs talk big, but most are just city boys, low on the masc score, lower than me—and then it was on.

  By the time I hit the registers I was skidding on adrenaline. Yeah, so I had stupid ideas about action and heroism, like every kid who wanted to be in the army. Thought I’d be a big hero, mowing down hostiles and never taking a hit, lighting up a cig with a big grin. Instead I was sick to my stomach and my heart was pounding too fast; I thought I’d wig out any second. The way my hands were shaking, I can’t believe I shot anyone, but I must’ve, sometime in between the shelves knocking over and the displays getting torn apart over me. I fought those revs until my magazine was empty, not that it took more than a minute at that, and that’s when the boys in uniform came and rescued me.

  I can’t remember the trip back to Camp Save Big. I know I didn’t make it on my own power. Mostly I remember the bit before I woke up, swimming in that big back-of-the-eyelid river, up and down until I broke the surface.

  Didn’t wake in any proper hospital. This was where they put the special projects, I guess. I could feel a catheter in, and my stomach dropped three feet. All I could think was Shit. All I could think was, Cover blown. People aren’t in the habit of asking after your privates unless they knew you took a reassessment, and I’d been liking that no one here knew. No one asks to see your license if you pass yourself off. If you don’t have chugs or a damn beard. Or a goddamn head injury that makes them stick a catheter in.

  I bit down hard, and made fists hard, and held
on to nothing until I heard a door open and guy’s voice say “Hey,” beside me.

  Look up and there was John, and he reached over to take my pulse. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m your attending. I told them you might like a private room, and they gave you this one—you being the hero of the hour.”

  I looked around at shelves shoved into a corner, a few warehouse pallets stacked in another corner, and decided it had been a crappy back room before becoming my crappy suite. Then what he said hit me. “Wait there. Hero?”

  “Hero of the battle of Fresh Food Mart,” John said. “Save the day. Get the girl. You know, if you want her.”

  I gave him a funny look, and he burst out laughing. “Christos, not me!”

  I laughed, too. “Think I’m Agatha’s type?”

  He reached down and patted my shoulder, and the funny thing was, I didn’t mind. Like, maybe it didn’t matter to his thinking that I got no bits—just like he got no girliness. We both had our dirty little secrets.

  “Tell you what, though. That’s got to be worth three points masculine on the GAT.”

  “Not unless they hand me a medal over it.” I groaned. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather get treatment than none and I was glad that my head didn’t hurt, but I wanted out of that bed, out of that hospital gown that fell down between my legs, out of just lying there helpless and feeling exposed to the world. John looked at his fingers.

  “Not fair, is it?”

  Yeah, and we both knew without asking. “Shit deal,” I said. “So what do we do?”

  John shrugged. “Keep going,” he said. “Things have to change sometime.”

  I looked at him. “You sound like a rev.” That talk about things changing, how unjust it all was. Hell, I guess I sounded like one, too, in my head, but I knew I wasn’t, and I don’t think John was either. Just two guys in bad positions.

  “Yeah, well. They’re wrong about a lot, but they’re not wrong about this.” John shrugged, and stood up. “I’ve got patients. You’re gonna be fine.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Good luck on your rounds.”

  He went, and I lay back and listened to the painkillers swirling in my veins. The door pulled open, and I didn’t hear it shut. I looked.