Page 9 of Spark Transform

The edge of his outstretched talent told him she was headed in his direction, and from somewhere overhead and to the north, in what felt like a flitter. The steady progress likely meant the traffic control system was in charge until she arrived at the rooftop airpad. She was alone in the flitter, so her advance security team was likely already in the pub, watching him.

He considered it safe to use the part of his talent that looked for electrical signatures. Any nearby high-level sifters could detect his activated talent, but not the nature of it. Only those who’d been snared by Davidro over the years would recognize it, and they were all dead.

From Charrascos’s first visit to the medical center, he’d recognized her unique pattern, but couldn’t remember having memorized it. He hadn’t even known her name until she’d introduced herself in the medical center, then told him his new name and the cover story she’d invented to cover his “accident.” The staff actually believed her improbable tale about him being an unlucky freelance construction consultant with few galactic government records and no fixed address.

He’d lost whole days from his memory, as if a minder cleaner had brain-wiped him. Since he was immune to that kind of telepath, the gaps more likely came from head trauma and oxygen deprivation.

From what he’d seen of his medical data, he was lucky not to remember having a building collapse on him and being trapped in the wreckage for ninety-some hours.

He was also lucky not to remember being slowly strangled by Davidro’s motherfucking analog collar that had been around his neck.

It galled that he’d forgotten the critical, obviously life-changing events that led up to it. He had a million other memories he’d rather have lost instead.

Charrascos came from the lifts in the building’s center. He didn’t need to look up to feel her come in, but he did anyway, so he could take in her new appearance. Deep brown, tightly curly hair in rosettes, brown eyes, tan skin, fuller cheekbones, and a wider nose.

No one else but the pubtenders noted her entrance. Charrascos ignored them.

He’d initially assumed the regular surface appearance changes pleased her sense of style, but came to realize they kept her safely distanced from the pale-skinned, red-haired avatar she used for broadcast visuals. And the changes were easy to do, especially in Ridderth, home of the best bodyshops in the galaxy.

It only took her one visual sweep of the pub to zero in on him. He wasn’t sure she’d remember him. Since his body had to be rebuilt from the bones outward anyway, he’d taken the opportunity to get a full body redesign during the rehab, the first one he’d ever had of his own choosing.

For free, too. Unlike the shadowy fugitive named Renner, “Faraday Brenner” was an ordinary, upstanding citizen of the Central Galactic Concordance who got free basic appearance reconstruction as part of his medical recovery. He’d simply told them what he wanted, as if that was what he’d looked like before. And since this was Ridderth, he got it.

He’d last seen Charrascos four months ago, the day he’d finally been released from rehab. She’d gifted him the raincoat and shockproof percomp he now wore and thrown in an anonymous cashflow chip with enough to live on for a year. He couldn’t figure out why she’d visited him sporadically during his recovery. He’d been afraid to ask.

When she showed up for his release day with the gifts, he’d told her to get lost. She had, until yesterday’s message.

Tonight, she wore a puffy scarf and a long, shapeless storm coat that could have come from the used-goods store he’d been at a few hours earlier.

She caught his eye, twitched an eyebrow as she looked him up and down, then walked toward him. She ignored the stool and leaned against the wall next to him, close enough for him to sense her energy field without trying.

The one thing she rarely changed was her height. Even wearing thick-soled boots, she was shorter than average. It hardly mattered. Her charisma could mesmerize a whole ward of medical personnel.

“The gold-brown skin still looks good,” she said quietly, then smiled. “Hair turned out to be too much trouble?”

He’d forgotten that he’d originally asked for hair on his head like normal people. The first and only time he’d used his full talent after getting out of rehab, he’d fried half of it off. He’d gone back to bald the next day.

As she had from day one in the recovery unit, she teased him like he was an old friend. It pissed him off that he didn’t remember meeting her, but they couldn’t have become friends in that short a time. He didn’t have friends back then.

“Yes.” He bluntly cut to the core. “What’s the job?”

She turned to him with a bright smile. “Want to see my new flitter?”

He pushed off the wall. “Sure.”

Obviously, she wanted privacy for their discussion. That suited him.

Silently, he followed her to the lifts and into a capsule. They rode to the roof, where a chilly wind blew, but the rain had let up. He pulled up his hood anyway.

She stepped to the kiosk and entered a code so the flitter stacker would release hers. His talent said no one else waited in the shadows or followed in the lifts. “Where’s your security team?”

Her animated expression faded. “Dead or close to it. Four days ago.”

He frowned to cover his shock. “All of them?”

They’d been with her in the various times she’d visited him in the medical center and the rehab facility. From what he’d seen, they’d been competent and professional. Once they decided he wasn’t a threat to Charrascos, they’d quit monitoring him so closely.

She nodded once. The noisy stacker mechanism ground to a halt and ejected a nondescript, mid-size air flitter. “I was already down to three. No replacements yet. I came here straight from the bodyshop.”