Popular Demand

For once he wasn’t wearing armor.

The Syndicate enforcer leaned against the wall outside a run-down medical clinic and pulled his poncho closer around his shoulders. Venezia was warm as planets went, at least in this region. But at this time of year the nights got cold. A light snow—a rarity on Venezia—fell gently over New Tyne’s dimly lit streets. Only a few people were out tonight. Even the poorest denizens of the independent paradise had better things to do than linger in the streets on a night like this.

He tugged the hem of the poncho and suppressed a shiver. He’d been an idiot to come out in the open without armor. His precious body armor might be scarred, battered, and in ten different states of disrepair, but its insulation still worked. It would have kept him far warmer than a poncho draped over faded surplus fatigues.

At least his boots were warm.

The fugitive once called as Simon-G294, better known to himself and his criminal employers as Stray, clenched his gloved hands together beneath the poncho. His fingers always froze first. They’d be stinging for hours even after he got in somewhere warm. Snow built up in his mop of dark hair and stung the tip of his nose.

Stray had endured far worse, of course. Still, he wondered what he was doing out here when he could be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

The clinic door swung open beside him. A woman and her son stepped out of the clinic. The woman gave him a puzzled look, then pulled her boy closer and hurried off. Stray watched them vanish down the darkened street, jaw set against the cold.

“Well,” a voice said behind him. “You look absolutely miserable.”

Stray flinched. He couldn’t help it. Cheeks already red with cold flushed even deeper as he turned to face the speaker.

She stood in a patch of shadow just around the corner, arms folded against the cold. Her thin lips turned up in an amused smile at the sight of him. Stray’s stomach lurched in a way it shouldn’t have as she stepped out into the light.

Almond brown hair framed a pair of matching brown eyes and a thin, pointed face. Cassandra-G006, his former teammate and current comrade in desertion, wore a set of pale green medical slacks that couldn’t possibly be thick enough for this cold. Somehow she didn’t seem chilled at all, apart from a bit of redness on her nose and the fog gently drifting up from her breath.

Cassandra raised an eyebrow at his silence. “Oh come on, don’t be mad. I knew you were out here so I slipped out the back door. I thought you had better situational awareness than this.”

“I’m not mad,” he said quickly.

“You look mad.”

“I always look mad. According to you, anyway. And I’m really cold out here.”

“I can see that. If I’d known you were walking around without your armor for once I’d have come get you sooner.”

“Every time I come around here you tell me not to wear armor,” he pointed out. “Something about scaring your patients.”

“Because they always think you’re a Syndicate collector. Some of them are needing help because of what enforcers do to them.” Cassandra was nice enough not to point out the obvious. More than a few of Stray’s marks—the ones the local Syndicate boss Min Ai didn’t want dead—wound up in the clinic after he was through with them. She usually had an earful for him after listening to some junkie’s sob story. Today at least she was feeling generous. “You weren’t out here long, were you?”

“Just fifteen minutes,” he said, subtracting a healthy amount from the real count.

Cassandra probably knew exactly how long he’d been waiting but let him get away with the lie. She gave him an apologetic frown. “The Davies took longer than usual. I think Robin has a strain of the flu that’s going around the neighborhood. I had to dig some more vaccinations out of the closet.”

Snow was building up in her hair now. Stray fought back a sudden urge to brush it clean. “They looked pretty happy. Not sick at all.”

“The whole neighborhood’s happy. Those crates you dropped off last week were enough to put together over a hundred Christmas dinners. They even had a party to celebrate. Apparently it’s the first Christmas party the block’s had in years.” Cassandra dipped her head. “I was hoping you’d come, too.”

Stray shifted uncomfortably and suppressed another shiver. “I got a bit of heat over that. Apparently those crates were meant for some VIPs downtown. You don’t want them tracing the goods back here. I sent Zoey over, anyway.”

“She really enjoyed herself. Where is she tonight, anyway?”

“Back at my place, cleaning my armor.”

Cassandra’s eyes narrowed, though the smile didn’t quite leave her lips. “I thought you said you wouldn’t make her do things like that anymore.”

“Cut me some slack. I’m giving her the rest of the week off. It’s the least that little freeloader can do.”

“You’re such a bully.” She punched him in the arm. “That’s a Ralph move—”

She caught herself too late. Stray looked away and clenched his teeth. Ralph had always been a jerk. He’d also been Stray’s best friend, back when he was Simon-G294. His best friend, and Stray had left him in the dirt with a knife lodged in his throat.

This always happened. It always came back to Ralph, or Philadelphia, or Mamore. Bad memories, old guilt. There was always something to make their time together painful. Something to hover between them and force them apart.

“I’m sorry,” Cassandra muttered. “That was a stupid thing to say.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m always doing stupid things and you always forgive me.”

“I always forgive you,” she agreed.

They stood in silence for several long minutes, watching the snow fall over an empty street. Stray fished for something to say and come up empty. Maybe it was better to stay quiet. Even with the cold it felt strangely nice just to stand here with her. No armor, no fighting. No Syndicate contracts, no fear of ONI kill teams.

“You’d forgive me, right?” Cassandra asked abruptly. “If I ever did anything really bad, I mean.”

“You? Do something bad?” He gave her an incredulous look. “Like run a health clinic in this trash heap?”

“I do a lot of bad things. It’s just no one ever notices.”

“Yeah, you’re a real monster. But that’s why I’m here” He didn’t know what she was talking about, or at least he wished he didn’t. Cassandra had used her freedom from the UNSC to do something more with her life. Something good. He was just doing the same gruesome work he’d done for ONI and the Insurrection. “To keep the heat off you. No one’ll ever think you could do anything bad when I’m around to distract them.”

“You’re too hard on yourself. You’re really not that bad.”

A few thousand people in Philadelphia might have a different opinion. Still, it felt good to hear her say that, even if it wasn’t true. “If you say so.”

“You made a lot of people happy with that food. I wanted you to know that.”

He’d made her happy. Stray didn’t care one way or another about the losers and whiners Cassandra worked herself to the bone helping. But making her happy was worth all the heat he’d trouble from the Syndicate. It was worth all the trouble in the galaxy.

He ought to tell her that. He wished he could. But how would he say it? How could he even begin to put how he felt into words? So he just stayed quiet. Sometimes it was just better to stay quiet.

Cassandra tugged the hem of his poncho. “I can’t believe you still wear this thing.”

“Of course I still wear it. It’s useful.” He hesitated. “And you gave it to me.”

“And I’m glad I did, because right now it’s the only thing keeping ups both warm.” Cassandra pulled the poncho out further, ducking under the cloth so that it suddenly shrouded them both. She drew the poncho around her shoulders and pressed her body close to Stray’s.

He didn’t know how to react. He fought back the urge to stiffen, to pull away, to do anything that might ruin this. He could feel his heart pounding furiously against his ribcage. And there, right next to it, he could feel hers as well.

Stray breathed out and tried to relax. To enjoy this the way he was supposed to.

“This is nice,” Cassandra murmured. “No fighting. No weapons. Nothing to worry about.”

“I’ve got a knife on my belt. And an M6D holstered on my leg.” What a stupid thing to say. Why did he always say the wrong thing?

“Yeah,” Cassandra sighed. “And I’ve got one on me, too. I wish I didn’t.”

“It’s smart. A city like this, you never know…”

“Yeah. You never know. And it’s how they raised us.” She sounded more wistful than sad. “Do you ever think about all the things we missed because of them? A normal life? Normal friends? Not having to be an expert on killing, or having to pretend like that’s a good thing?”

“Not really.” He thought about the boy and his mother who had disappeared down the street. What were they doing now? “Normal doesn’t keep you alive. There’s plenty of reasons to hate ONI and the rest of them. But they made us survivors.”

“Can’t complain about that, I guess.”

He didn’t reply. Instead he just did his best to enjoy this while it lasted. Beneath the wonderful warm feelings that even burned away the cold, he felt a terrible gnawing fear. This wouldn’t last. Nothing good ever lasted. Something else would come between them again. They’d have a fight or just be too busy to talk to each other. Something always happened.

But that was all the more reason to make this moment last as long as possible. He finally reached up and brushed the snow out of Cassandra’s hair. She made a contented noise and pressed even closer, her chest rising and falling in time with his own.

“Cass?” He heard his own voice, almost like it was coming from someone else.

“Si?” Now that was a name he hadn’t heard in a while.

“It’s really cold out here.”

“It is,” she agreed. “We should go inside. There’s some leftovers from the party in the back room if you’re hungry.”

“Sounds nice. But I…” he trailed off, words failing him.

“Yeah?”

“I wouldn’t mind being cold a bit longer.”

“Neither would I.”