A Cause for One, Page 2

give them any excuses…" A tide of riot shields came up behind her. Her eyes, wide and blue, caught Jaime's gaze when he sprung from the mob.

  "Down. Take him down," went the voice from the radios. The world blurred into slow-motion.

  The sound of thunder impacted into Jaime's padded jacket. Hot metal ripped into his chest and hot liquid spilled out. Stumbling forward as his body gave up, Jaime pinched the bio-chip free from his head. Flailing a palm wildly into Marjorie's temple, he knocked the woman off her platform.

  A microsecond of blankness, of non-being, then the bio-chip filaments downloaded 'Jaime.' Foreign consciousness invaded Marjorie's brain compartmentalising her own personality and her birth-injected 'state chip.' Jaime was reborn.

  Hunched up on the ground in the body of a bewildered middle-aged lady, Jaime looked through eyes fuzzing with the signal of a downloading bioweapon. Enforcers charged heavily with Tasers and truncheons. Jaime watched the body that used to be his convulse under their violence. How strange to watch himself die, to not share the single last experience of his life. For the many, not the one.

  "A terrorist, most likely looking for headlines. Are you okay, Ma'am?" came a man's voice before a strong hand helped pull Marjorie up. Marjorie nodded, consciously cupping her temple to mask a trickle of fresh blood, then pulling down jaw-length brown and grey hair.

  Smiling weakly, Jaime tried to remember thoughts that were not his own, tried to pick over the important things in this woman's mind. An appointment. Yes… the reason for the fuss. Marjorie's appointment on this damned day, with the Great Sir himself.

  "We mustn't give the enforcers an excuse to do any more damage," Jaime said, testing out the woman's voice. It felt oddly detached, something like a ventriloquist with a dummy. He would have to get used to it.

  The young man put his arm around Marjorie's waist, took her weight from her unsteady legs. Jaime sensed the lady's fond recollections of him, someone in her closest circle who her memory tagged as 'Jake.' With a touch both lingering and familiar, Marjorie's instinctual reaction was not to pull away but to relish the momentary closeness. Yes, she knew him very well.

  Her thoughts continued to unfold and Jaime explored, tracing the route to corridors of power, to the place of her most privileged appointment. "Jake, take me to the…," searching her mind "…to the Council Chamber."

  "Marj, your appointment isn't for hours."

  "Take me there anyway. Please."

  With her weight against him, Jake slowly slunk through the sirens and madness of the dispersing crowd. The crying and screaming soon faded into faintly ringing ghosts along metal walls.

  Something rumbled in Marjorie's stomach, her head spun and she barely kept balance. All of a sudden Jaime noticed that the blind spot in Marjorie's peripheral vision had disappeared. It meant the weapon had started to grow and feed off Marjorie's bioenergy.

  With every step Jaime's sentience jarred against the unfamiliar aches and balances of this new skin, the skin of a mature woman used to the finger-callousing and back-breaking work of the manufactories. Shock still trembled through her veins. A freeze-frame image of when Jaime had burst from the crowd haunted her mind. She had thought he would kill her. Instead, I stole you and killed myself.

  Toward the Council Chamber they climbed down a winding stairway, grease-slicked and thick with the smell of paint. The stairway led to a depression, arriving at an inconspicuous metal door. The tradesman's entrance.

  Several enforcers, all in black body armour but without visor and shield, stood on guard. One nodded at Marjorie, even ventured a smile. "Ma'am, if you please…" he said, before going through the half-hearted formality of a pat-down. "Sorry Miss, standard procedure." He pointed up at the cameras taking it all in.

  But when Jake stepped forward the mood changed. The enforcer's gloved hand pressed against the young man's chest. "Piss off. You're not coming in." That jolted through Marjorie, rubbed raw against a hard-wired morality.

  "How dare you. Respect those whose labour puts the food on your plate." Not Jaime's words even though they came from the mouth he apparently controlled.

  The guard met Marjorie's gaze then looked away. "Sorry Miss. No offence meant. It's just that we got to be careful, what with the Great Sir's visit. Rumour has it some terrorists took the moon-colony hostage." Turning to Jake, "We can't let you in…mate," said the enforcer, unable to bring himself to say 'sir.'

  Jake squeezed Marjorie's hand. He winked and smiled, cheeky and cheerful, igniting a thrill in the lady's stomach. The sensation reminded Jaime of Roz.

  Pulling in a breath, Jaime tried to refocus Marjorie's thoughts while the enforcer tapped a keypad. The door clicked open. Marjorie entered; the door clanked closed and took Jake out of sight.

  Through sloped halls of flaking white paint, and glaring white lights, an enforcer led Marjorie. All the while the bioweapon fed and grew rapidly inside her, causing weakness to seep through her limbs, her every step tottering. Occasionally red pinpricks winked from obscured lenses and scanned for threats; certain chemicals, moving parts, metals, biologically anomalies. But all it found in Marjorie was an unexpected swelling of her stomach. The woman must be pregnant.

  A grand double door of dark-wood, heavy with the scent of varnish, waited at the end of a hall. "The Council Chamber, Ma'am," said her escort giving the door a push. He waved Marjorie through, nodded slightly, then closed it behind her.

  Plush red carpet, leather sofas, book cases and a drinks cabinet all served to jar against Jaime's and Marjorie's sensibilities. A double sneer in a shared skull. You'd never guess most of us live in misery.

  A grey haired man, looking polished in a three-piece suit, reclined on one of the sofas. Not a slicked hair out of place or a patch of missed stubble on his clean shaven face. Oozing self-assurance, he stood and rattled ice cubes in a glass of some sort of liquor. Dissent stirred in the back of Marjorie's mind finding agreement, yet again, with Jaime's own thoughts.

  On the far wall an information display framed another set of double doors. Flashing words rolled across the frame, 'Awaiting Connection.'

  "We have to wait for the tramline to link up with the Great Sir's Managerial Headquarter Craft," said the grey haired man, in answer to Marjorie's curious stare. "Marjorie, I am your Supervisor. Honoured to share my appointment with you. How times are changing," he said, smiling broad and white and offering a hand to shake.

  Mistrust prickled at the back of Marjorie's mind and Jaime left the offered hand hanging. "Hello, Supervisor."

  The Supervisor's eyes narrowed. "Truth be told, I am worried about you. I wouldn't want you to embarrass yourself. I fear you will only be disappointed with the realities of such a meeting. You can't possibly understand interstellar politics. And, I see you are with child?"

  About to speak, Marjorie suddenly gasped and doubled over, rusty razors of pain sliced up her spine. The weapon. Ready.

  Wetness broke over Marjorie's face as she fought pain and the invasive personality in her mind. Rivulets of sweat drooled off her chin. The Supervisor stepped back. "Marjorie?"

  Her abdomen bulged, stretched like elastic. Slick red patches swelled through her overalls. Dribbles ran in strands onto upholstered leather furniture. Marjorie moaned, slipping a hand under her overalls.

  Carefully placing his glass down on a table the Supervisor took another step back. "What the hell? I'll get help." He eyed the door.

  "No. Wait," Marjorie gasped. Then, as the Supervisor made to leave, Marjorie unsheathed what had burst through her stomach. Glistening wetly, smeared with gunk and blood, a wriggling clot pulsing blue with stored bio-electricity. All made from the woman's own innards.

  "I certainly do know my politics, Mr Supervisor," she spat. Twice she squeezed the spongy mass lighting trigger-nerves. A barely seen blue flash, silent sparks of energy shot out into the Supervisor. All for the Cause.

  With his suit still spick and spam the Supervisor made a neat corpse. But his hair was no longer perfectly in pl
ace, instead crusting along the burnt out gape of his skull.

  Horror struck from somewhere inside Marjorie's guts and she gasped at such an act. "Murderer" coughed the voice from her lips. No, the bastard deserved it. Don't ruin this for me. Jaime averted his eyes from the body struggling to remain in control.

  Dammit. He grabbed the Supervisor's abandoned liquor glass and downed it before tossing it onto the carpet. The burn of booze felt good in Marjorie's veins, the shock wrenching control back into Jaime's possession. Yet it failed to numb the pain both inside and out. Filaments sprang from Marjorie's stomach like worms called up by rain, wriggling to knit her body closed, blood rapidly congealed. But it all still hurts so damn much.

  Then the double doors at the back of the room slide open with a ping. 'Please Board,' ran the flashing display above the now revealed lift-pod. Weapon in hand, ready to meet the most powerful man in the Seven Systems, Marjorie embarked.

  Slunk in a body-moulding chair, Jaime watched his ascent through the lift-pod's glass walls. Passing the tallest smoke-stacks in seconds the pod accelerated up a tramline, through planet-side stink until clouds burst pure and white.

  In the shallowest depth of space the lift came to a halt. From here the planet's moon could be seen, an irregular shaped rock scattered with huge mineshafts, colony domes glinting white with reflected