You know? One time in my life I just wanna be eased softly outta unconsciousness by the aroma of good coffee, light jazz in the background, maybe a gentle hand-job.
But my life wasn't like that. As usual, agony dragged me awake. My back throbbed like it had been dipped in lava. What the fuck had happened to me?
A gummy eye opened. I was in a hospital room. A cannula needle was embedded in my hand, I guessed from a morphine drip. My entire upper body was one giant fucking bandage. I seriously needed to stop doing this shit to myself.
My memory came back one crystalline thought at a time, like grains of sand falling through a timer.
Did Dante make it out?
Did Rayan?
The grains of sand became a slow-flowing trickle through my mind.
Fuck. What if Kate Jones hadn't saved Dante from Zaki?
The trickle became a sand dune.
My arms wrapped around nothingness. I'd been cradling a little bundle when I'd passed out. I tossed my head around the tiny hospital room. Where was she?
No crib. No bassinet. No sign of her. Unholy fucking terror gripped at my heart.
"Where's my baby?" Cannula ripped clean outta my arm, I hauled my busted-up self off the bed and threw open the door. I limped along the silent corridor, slamming open doors onto bewildered patients cowering in their beds as I bellowed, "Where's my baby?" in their faces.
Nurses appeared, rushing to and fro to calm patients, their hands raised in appeal with cries of "Amrika Sayid! You must rest!"
"Where's my baby?" The fire exit end of the corridor loomed. I crashed against it in a tearful heap, wailing in Arabic and English like either would help me. "I want my baby!"
I looked up to see a tiny matron with a tie-dye hijab scuttling along the corridor toward me. "Your baby is coming! Rest, Sayid! Rest!"
I swiped my arm across my tears. "Where is she?"
"Will you rest, Sayid?" Matron did not look like she was gonna take shit from bandaged American dudes. She gestured me to get the fuck up then turned on her heels, scribbling in a notebook as I trailed after her back along the corridor. "The doctor is doing checks."
"Is she hurt? Did she get burned? She's six weeks premature. Did I hurt her when I was running? Is she—"
"Sayid! She passed all health tests!" Matron reset my cannula and tucked me tight under my bed sheets like she was folding a burrito. "But you need to rest."
Dread overtook me, and I wrenched at the sheets. "She's not...engineered...is she? Is she normal?"
Matron's face flickered. "We don't know. She's a strong girl, Sayid. I promise."
Didn't matter. Whatever Mira had done to her, my Star was OK. And she was a strong girl! But I really really fucking needed to see her. My tears had dried up but the shakes were taking their sweet time to stop. I asked in the politest and most non-crazy voice I could attempt right then, "Please can I see my baby?"
The door creaked open. My heart leaped into my throat.
Dante stood there cradling a bundle in a blanket. He was OK. And my Star was OK.
He slid her into my arms. My whole body reverberated with relief that she was back with me. My little gusanita looked all snug and rosy. I pecked a kiss to her nose, then pulled Dante onto the bed for an onslaught of kisses to his jaw, his neck, his hands, any skin I could reach. "¡Ay bendito! I was so scared. I thought Zaki had..."
"I'm OK. Rayan's OK too. He's coming." Dante sat gingerly, the both of us hissing in pain as I held him against my bandages, but neither of us wanted to let go. Save a few cuts and bruises he looked his usual perfect self. "I spent most of the time trying to hide from Zaki and get back to you. He broke two of my ribs, and," Dante held up a splinted trio of fingers, "guess I'm not gonna be climbing for a few weeks."
"Is Zaki in jail?"
"He was strangling me when the Marines showed up. Katie...shot him. Point-blank. Right here." Dante put a hand to his chest. Kate Jones had ended Mira and Zaki in the same way, as her personal target practice.
Steph's killers were dead. Dante didn't look triumphant. I got him, though. Mira had died in my arms, but I hadn't felt the retribution I'd been expecting. All I'd felt was the sting that she'd escaped justice for Steph, and Mamá, and all the others.
"I'm sorry we don't get to do the whole International Criminal Court thing," I said.
"It's OK. It's over. You're safe. Thought I'd lost you." He trailed slow fingers up my arm, hesitantly sliding a fingertip along my scar.
I flinched in anticipation of the boxcutter-burn of Dante's touch, but there was no pain. No nausea. No agony lanced up my arm. Nothing. Just Dante's skin on mine. My scar—and perhaps a deeper scar inside me—had healed.
Emboldened, I slid a finger under Dante's T-shirt, then another. He held his breath, his body tensing at the gentle slide of my hand up his chest. My fingers came to settle at his scar. The scar I'd cut into him. Gentle fingertips followed the gnarled crests of scar tissue. My face crumpled in a flurry of tears. "I'm sorry."
"Shh, Jay." He brushed away tears, then pressed a kiss to my lips. "It's over."
I nodded at my Star. "I got a baby."
"And you owe me a feed and two diaper changes."
"Don't fucking tell me you're amazing at childcare," I groaned into Star's blanket. "Is there anything you're not good at?"
"Come on, Jay. Vinnie and me took care of our baby cousins when we were little. It's not so hard."
"You gotta teach me." I pecked more kisses onto Star's head. She smelled so good. "Isn't she the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?"
"She is." Dante slid a finger into Star's tiny hand. She gripped it like the little changuita she was. "What's her name?"
"Star. And, if it's OK with you, I thought it could be Star Stephanie Torres."
"You don't have to, Jay," he murmured.
"I want to."
"OK," Dante fiddled with a bandage over my heart with shaky fingers, "so how about Star Stephanie Torres-Russo, you know, if you ever wanna..."
Wait.
What?
He couldn't be fucking serious.
Could he?
"Dante?" I slid my palm over his. "Are you suggesting we..?"
"No, Jay. I'm not suggesting it." Beautiful eyes locked onto mine. "I'm asking you."
This was the part where I was supposed to say "Yes" clearly and convincingly. All I could manage was to weep uncontrollably into Star's blanket while nodding my head like a maniac.
Dante hit me with a heart-stopping smile and pulled me to him, the two of us groaning in unison as broken ribs chafed and burns throbbed. "I'll take that as a yes."
After what I could confidently claim was the most emotional Christmas Day I'd ever had in my entire life, ending the afternoon by getting engaged to the most beautiful man in the world seemed to have broken something inside me, leaving me incapable of doing anything but nod and cry.
Dante held up his phone, the screen cracked to fuck. "Check the María Times front page. You're going to be awarded the María Medal for Bravery. Senator Hayes is presenting it."
"Why? I didn't do anything."
Dante peppered the unbandaged bits of me with kisses. "Just took down Alcor. And saved Rayan. And me. And Star. And ended the illegal Lazarus and Demon Star projects."
"I guess."
Medals and fancy meetings with senators were nice. But everyone knew I'd joined Alcor, I'd killed people, I'd hurt Dante, and I'd led Zaki to Rayan. There'd been no bravery involved, just righting all my wrongs. Besides, I'd owed everything to my fiancé and my hermanito, the two people who'd had more faith in me than I had. Those guys needed all the medals.
"Listen, Jay. I've been thinking. There's a fast-track program for recruiting police officers who won the María Medal. You can train on the job, no academy."
It was sweet of Dante to suggest it, but I couldn't. "With my criminal record they won't—"
"A famous María Medal recipient with a criminal record aced the program years back, and became a María PD officer. A damn good one."
"Who?"
Dante's eyebrows arched with mischief. "A certain Detective Inspector."
"You're shitting me! Sylvia?"
"She was a burglar. Even became the boss of a crime family for a short time."
I couldn't fucking believe it. The paragon of law enforcement, Sylvia Payne, had been a criminal back in the day?
Actually, I could totally fucking believe it. What I couldn't believe was that the people of María—and Hamish McCloud—could love an ex-criminal. "How could Sylvia have been trusted to join María PD?"
Dante shrugged. "Her heart was big."
As if her feline ears had pricked up at her name, Sylvia clicked into the room, Hamish and Rayan hard on her heels. Rayan looked his usual sharp-eyed self, save big dark rings like he'd not slept for days. He peeked at Star.
It occurred to me that nobody knew who Star's mother was. I could lie. I could tell everyone that Mira al Assad had procured an egg from an anonymous Saudi woman for Demon Star's first human trial. I could save Star from the shame of a lifetime of knowing who her biological mother truly was, and what she'd done.
But Rayan seemed to sense it all. He didn't need to be told. Sylvia and Hamish stood back with furrowed brows while Rayan hovered by the bed, eyes wide and sweat beading on his lip.
"You OK, acho?"
"Yeah," he breathed.
"I...I got a daughter."
Rayan inched closer, like he was meeting a wolverine, not a preemie baby. "Is she..?"
"Yeah." I pushed Star into his arms before he could protest. "Her name is Star."
He held her stiffly and scanned her face, perhaps looking for traces of his mother, or himself, in her features. He didn't speak for a long while, his shoulders easing the longer he sat.
Then, he wiggled a pinky into Star's clenched fist. "She's so tiny. Her grip is strong."
"Do you like her?"
His lip trembled and his eyes clouded with tears. "Ya rab, Jay. I love her. She's...my sister, I guess." He turned to me with a quizzical look, eyes faraway and unfocused like he was solving arithmetic in his head. "What does that make you and me?"
I cringed into Dante's shoulder. "Don't think about it too much, acho."
He pointed at the wall of bandages that was my chest. "She messed you up bad, huh?"
"No big deal. Our throwing star target practice paid off, huh? You were amazing, acho."
He grinned at me. My hermanito had proven to Sylvia and Hamish that he was tough as nails. Looked like I wasn't the only one who was gonna be joining María PD training.
Dante draped an arm over Rayan's shoulder. "How did you escape from your room to throw that tracker-star at Zaki?"
"It was the weirdest thing. The maid brought my laundry back all washed and folded, and in between my clothes was a length of steel pipe. So, I knocked out my guard and started walking. I saw...I saw Zaki with you. I..." Rayan began to swat away tears, "I didn't know what to do..."
"You did great." Dante pulled Rayan and Star into a hug. "You saved me and Jay, and Star. You know that?"
"Good work, Jason." Sylvia stepped forward on...was she wearing kitten heels? Maybe her feet were fucked from all the frantic pacing she musta done over the past day. "I got you a present."
"Sylvia! You shouldn't have!"
"Well, I didn't buy it. I found it. In a parking lot. It's damaged."
My eyebrows crashed together in confusion. "I'm touched, I guess."
"A Ducati Super-bike was found inexplicably abandoned in the María PD parking lot. It was traced back to Casper Vogel, who is in jail awaiting trial in relation to the Demon Star project. So naturally it was commandeered for the Police Confiscation Sale to any willing citizens at a reasonable price, given that it has a bullet hole in one of the panels. I bought it for you."
"Sylvia?" My heart was fucking soaring. "Are you telling me that I'm the owner of a Ducati Super-bike?
"You said you wanted a motorcycle when you got out of jail. Think of it as a Christmas present. Or," she nodded at Star, "a baby shower gift."
Dante nudged me. "Or, an engagement present?"
"You're kidding me!" Rayan flew at us.
Sylvia and Hamish shook my hand with so much vigor that the room started spinning around me. Rayan pressed me against pillows as my eyelids drooped.
The click-click of my brain's gears didn't slow despite the powercut. Mira was gone, but could Alcor be truly dismantled? I could only guess at what genetic landmines she'd planted in Star's life for her to stumble on as she grew. Did the Demon press white-hot needles into my baby's little spine even now? Whatever she faced, my Star would have her Papi right there with her.
Exhaustion took me over in waves and blackness descended, my mind unable to follow Hamish and Sylvia's chatter. Steady beats of sleep flowed over me. I embraced the little nap, knowing I'd be softly eased outta unconsciousness by the little universe on my bed.
Translations
Amrika Sayid - Arabic, lit. "Mr America"
hijab - a headscarf commonly worn by women in the Muslim world
gusanita - Spanish, "little worm"
ay bendito - Puerto Rican Spanish, lit. "blessed" and is like saying "oh you poor thing" or "aww man" or generally giving sympathy
hermanito - Spanish, "little brother"
acho - Puerto Rican Spanish, "young man"
changuita - Spanish, "little monkey"
ya rab - Arabic, "Oh my God"
Thanks so much for reading "Something Wicked"! I hope you enjoyed Jason's story!
If you like reading about shadowy gangs, devious criminals and angsty lads in love, try out my book "The Sigma Asset" on my profile.
Or, you can try my queer cyberpunk romance, "Parasite", also on my profile.