Author: Douglas A. Taylor
Category: Suspense
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Chapter 14
Wizzit was as good as his word. He always is. I have no idea how he keeps our kitchen as well stocked as it is, but when Trina went out for a visit the following morning, she brought with her the first of many dietary supplements and other items we provided Shelley during the period she was incarcerated.
"How did she look?" I asked Trina a little later. We were in the gym, going over her knife-hand technique one last time before the real test that was to occur the next day.
"A lot better," Trina said. "More like her old self." She took careful aim and struck at the pad I was holding for her.
"Nice," I commented. "Your technique has gotten really good. You shouldn't have any trouble breaking the board tomorrow."
"Thanks, but . . . Trevor, I have been thinking. Perhaps I shouldn't go through with the bet."
"Why not?" I asked her, surprised. "You're a shoo-in to win it."
"Maybe, but I'm not sure what to do if I do win. Of course I know where I would want Mike to take me for dinner, but I don't really want to make him parade around in a skimpy bathing suit, and having him dress up like a clown would just be spiteful."
"It'd be funny, though." When she didn't return my smile, I went on with a shrug, "Well, I guess that forfeiting is one option, but if you do that, you can be sure that Mike has a pretty little outfit all picked out for you."
"And you wouldn't mind at all seeing me in it, would you?"
I grinned and winked at her. "Sure. It's a win-win for me. But seriously, Trina, if you don't want to humiliate him, then don't. That doesn't mean you have to purposely lose the bet."
She looked thoughtfully down at the ground. "I just want to be taken seriously, that's all. It drives me crazy, the way Mike treats me like a silly, bubble-headed girl some of the time and a fragile porcelain doll other times."
"Well, even if Mike doesn't take you seriously, plenty of the rest of us do. I mean, Nicolai gave up his spot as Orange because he thought you'd be better at it, right?"
"He didn't do it for me," she replied with a smile. "He did it because he wants to spend his time tinkering in the weapons room."
"Fine, then. I take you seriously. Didn't I start taking a hundred shots a day at the practice range just because you told me to? My aim has really been improving, by the way." I crossed my arms and looked at her sternly. "And it seems to me, young lady, that you promised me some aikido lessons if I helped you with this board-breaking business."
She regarded me skeptically. "Do you really want to learn? It won't help you beat up on Zoinks."
"Maybe not, but I'd sure like to be able to deal with Lily without pounding her face into the pavement like I did in New York."
She winced at the memory. "That's a good point," she admitted. "All right, we will start training you tomorrow afternoon -- if I win the bet in the morning!"
"That's the spirit! I'll be here."
Bill arrived a few minutes after Trina left, ready for his sparring session with me. Like me, he was wearing shorts and a loose-fitting tee-shirt. "Let's just start slow," he said. "I'm not trying to prove anything; I just want to get back into practice for this sort of thing."
"Fair enough," I nodded.
We warmed up for a while, then started fighting in earnest. At first, I didn't do much offensively or defensively; I mainly blocked and circled around him. It didn't take long, though, before I had to start offering more than just token resistance. I quickly found myself having to retreat in a hurry to avoid flurries of punches that I wouldn't have been able to block. That made me a little suspicious, and when he started throwing multiple jumping backwheel kicks at me, I called a time out.
"What's the matter?" he asked, barely even breathing hard. "Too much for you?"
I slowly shook my head. "I'm just trying to figure out what the heck's going on. Why you lied to me."
His eyebrows raised up. "Did I lie to you? I said I was looking for a tune-up session."
"True," I admitted, "but you also gave me the impression that you were out of practice and maybe a bit out of condition as well. That's not what I just saw. You've obviously been training pretty hard recently, and I'm pretty sure you were trying to show off just now, even though you said you weren't trying to prove anything."
He considered this, then nodded. "All right, you got me. Maybe I was." He sighed. "Look, I'm a thirty-two-year-old guy, a Prime has-been who has been brought back for one last hurrah. Shelley tells me that the kid Wizzit brought in to replace me is ten years younger than I am, and he's quite the hotshot. So I decided to see for myself just how good you are. Frankly, I'm not impressed."
I shrugged. "I wasn't trying to impress you. I was trying to help you get yourself back in shape so you can fight Enclave with the rest of us. But it doesn't look like you need my help, so if you'll excuse me . . ."
He held up a hand as I started to walk away. "Trevor, wait." He looked at the floor for a moment, then said, "I guess we might have gotten off on the wrong foot. Sorry about that. I really want to prove that I'm good enough, that I belong back on the team, and . . . well, maybe this wasn't the best way to go about it."
I crossed my arms. "Look, Bill, I don't know you. I don't know what kind of guy you are or anything about you. What I do know is that Wizzit pulled you back in. That says a lot. Add that to the fact that everyone here who does know you is absolutely thrilled that you're back, and I'm perfectly happy to accept you as one of the team. Let's leave it at that for right now, okay?"
He nodded. "Fair enough." He adopted a fighting stance. "So, hotshot, do you feel like going a few rounds with an old man who's not quite as out of shape as you thought? I promise I'm going to push you as hard as I can."
I grinned. "Sure. That sounds like fun."
And you know what? It was. Bill was a plenty tough opponent, and he did push me pretty hard. Like most big guys, he tended to rely on power and weight rather than speed or leverage, but that didn't mean he was sloppy. And it had been a while since I had a really skilled partner to practice with. Shelley and I didn't train together a whole lot, Padma wasn't quite advanced enough, and I've never felt like I could go all-out against Angie. Bill, though, had me busting out some moves I hadn't practiced for ages -- 540-backwheels, jumping-turning roundhouses, stuff like that -- and it felt really good. After an hour or so of hard sparring, the two of us collapsed to the floor, dripping with sweat.
"So," he said after we had both caught our breath, "what can you tell me about Lily?"
"Lily?" I raised my eyebrows, surprised at abrupt change in topic. "What do you want to know about her?"
"Everything, I guess. Shelley wanted me to ask you specifically, because you know the most about her. She told me that she's one of your biggest pains in the neck right now."
"Yeah, that's a fair statement." I told him everything we knew about her -- her origins as the Cantonese-speaking girl Li Lin-fa, her various personalities as the English-speaking "attack doll" called Lily Lee, and what we knew of the commands that JB Swift used to control her. I also went over the time I had spent talking with her while Padma and I had been trapped at the Enclave base.
Bill seemed especially interested in the fact that it was apparently only as Li Lin-fa that she was able to sleep. Indeed, that had been our main worry during the short time we had held her captive, that prolonged lack of sleep might cause Lily serious harm, since we had been unable to find any way to bring the Li Lin-fa personality to the surface.
"And you're sure that this Li Lin-fa isn't just one of the personas available in Lily's, er, 'companion mode'?"
I smiled wryly. Companion mode -- a euphemism if there ever was one. It was a section in Lily's programming that let her assume any one of a myriad of different personalities in order to provide . . . what had her phrase been? . . . "social and sexual companionship for those operating the attack doll." Something lik
e that. Basically, a living, breathing love doll who could be just about anyone you wanted her to be and do whatever you wanted her to do.
The thing was, according to what Lily herself told us, every single one of those personalities spoke only English, and in the three conversations I had held with Li Lin-fa, the only English I ever heard her speak was when she told Padma, "Hello, Prime Violet. Happy birthday."
I told Bill as much, and he nodded thoughtfully. He asked me a few more questions, mainly about the exact circumstances of my last visit with Li Lin-fa. The poor girl had been so tired then that she kept drifting off to sleep whenever I wasn't speaking directly to her.
I half-expected him to ask me about my feelings toward her. I was sure that Shelley had given him her best guess, which was that I had fallen pretty hard for Li Lin-fa. He didn't ask, though, and I was glad of that. I really like and trust Shelley, and I'd have willingly shared my deepest, darkest secrets with her, but I still didn't know Bill well enough to have that kind of conversation with him.
And to be honest, I wasn't sure how I felt. At the time, Li Lin-fa had seemed like a wonderfully sweet, warm, innocent, and lovely young woman, and she had desperately needed my help. Like Shelley told me once, I'm a sucker for damsels in distress. But in the months since, I had seen almost no sign of Li Lin-fa, only the cold, robotic Lily Lee, and I had begun wondering whether that other side of her had been just an illusion, or maybe wishful thinking on my part. And then, when Lily had killed Prime Commander in order to escape the prison we had put her in . . . let's just say that my feelings for her were somewhat confused.
Regardless, he thanked me for the information and for the sparring practice, and he said he would give the matter of Lily some thought.