Chapter 1
“You okay?” Dern asks.
He and Fox are partnering on a recon mission for Theresa in the Dunelands — which, frankly, creep Fox the hell out.
They freak him out for a number of reasons.
1. Those mounds? Not made of sand.
2. If Fox were planning an ambush, this is exactly where he’d do it:
a. Too many places to hide.
b. Easy ways to blend into the environment for an ambush (for example, pretending you’re a mound of not-sand and then BAM! Slit a throat. Easy.)
Fox makes lists in his head when he’s nervous. It calms him down. So what, he thinks, I’m compulsive.
Dern speaks up, “I take umbrage with your word usage, Fox.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I can hear you thinking.”
“It IS a compulsion, Dern. Noun. Definition: an irresistible urge to behave in a certain way, especially against one’s conscious wishes.” He pulls it up on his vid screen for dramatic effect.
“Besides,” he continues, “we haven’t got real psych doctors nowadays, so is it clinical? Unknown. Am I gonna persist in the word usage? Hell yea.”
Dern sighs.
Fox grins and launches into a story.
“I met a guy once—Before—who said he didn’t believe in mental health. So I asked, ‘Do you believe in health overall?’ and he goes, ‘Yeah, of course.’ So I said, ‘Then you just don’t think the mind counts as part of health?’ And he says, ‘Yeah.’”
Fox pauses, “Are you listening?”
Dern looks at him pointedly while piloting the bus and nods dramatically.
Fox reenacts the rest of the conversation: “‘I don’t think sadness is a mental illness. I think it’s just a function of living. The brain isn’t meant to be happy too long. Depression, compulsion? Not always unhealthy.’”
Fox shifts in his seat. “At first I thought he was a crackpot. Later, I got it — delivery is key and we all say stupid shit more often than we intend to.”
There’s a lull in the conversation.
“Where was I going with this?” Fox asks.
Dern looks up at the ceiling in quiet frustration.
“Regardless,” Fox declares, “I think I’m the perfect specimen of mental health.”
Dern throws him a sidelong glance and switches off the engine.
They step out and start perimeter checks.
Fox starts up again as if he’d never stopped, “I, unencumbered by too many emotions, kill often for my living and live well doing it. I don’t think I’m sociopathic.
Do I think I’m evil? I don’t know… I don’t think so. Sometimes it worries me that I can turn off my empathy when it suits me. But I do have the capacity for it.
Empathy, I mean.”
Dern responds after a pointed glare from Fox, “Yes, Boss. Empathy, Boss.”
They round a dune.
From nowhere, an assailant launches—a knife aimed straight for Fox’s throat.
Wrong move.
The assailant sees the guns and says, “Ohshitohshitshitshit,” as he tries to turn his lunge into a pivot-and-run.
Fox fires two quick rounds: one in the knife arm, one in the knee.
The guy collapses, howling.
“See?” Fox says, he walks over and shoots him in between the eyes, the noise ceasing abruptly, he indicates himself with his gun, “I have empathy!”
Fox, head tilting to the side, looks at his handiwork, “would an empath do that?”
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Dern mutters.
Fox holsters his weapon and approaches the still-steaming body.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” He whispers to himself.
He’s comforted because, as much as he doesn’t trust anyone, he believes strongly that Dern will cover his behind.
Dern likes to be alive. Dern stays alive better when Fox is around.
Plus, if Fox died while on a cruise and Dern came back alive, Theresa would make damn sure Dern regretted it.
He probably wouldn’t live long, and she’d probably make it hurt too.
Fox doesn’t enjoy killing unnecessarily. Dead guys sometimes have friends.
And Fox? Fox likes being liked.
Which is why, if he kills someone, he tends to kill everyone who might miss them. Clean sweeps. Loose ends.
Fox's reputation precedes him. The squad knows not to start shit when he’s around. Clean sweeps are discouraged, but they still happen.
Recently, though, he’s trying restraint. But today his mind was elsewhere.
Lucky for him, Corp-less corpses usually don’t have too many mourners. A small mercy.
But still, Fox mutters, “I hate when the things I imagine actually happen. Makes me feel all goopy inside. Like maybe I have precognition or some shit.”
“You were imagining someone coming out of the dunes with a knife to stab you in the throat?” Dern questions.
“Yep.”
“What it must be like inside your head.”
“It gets tiring, if you must know.”
After rifling through the body’s belongings, Fox sees the red dust coating everything, “Iron Sea,” he says. “Has to be.”
He holds up a tag: “His name was either Harry or Larry. Tag’s filed down, so who knows.”
They bag him. Theresa will want the body.
Dern groans as they lift him. “It’s gonna be a long damn day.”