io9 is proud to present fiction fromLIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE.
Once a month, we feature a story from LIGHTSPEEDs current issue.
This months selection is The Waking Sleep of a Seething Wound by dave ring.
Illustration: Grandeduc (via Adobe Stock)
Bini had been awake for hours, back aching.
She was too old for this shit.
Mox still slept like the dead, her snores a regular wheeze.
Graphic: Adamant Press
Hard to imagine Bini had once slept beside that noise every night.
Until movement finally flickered through the streaked bay windows below them.
Bini peered through the rifles scope to find the farmer putting the kettle on.
It took all Binis grit not to pull the trigger.
Bini nudged Mox and gently covered her mouth when the other woman would have scolded her.
Bini moved aside without protest.
Mox was by far the better shot.
Ill be on channel five.
Bini signaled an affirmative and began her descent.
The rating stood for their aptitude at interacting with SAPPhO, the subatomic particle phase order.
Operatives just called it the void.
The first part of the rating was a number between 0 and 100.
The second part was a letter.
The number indicated how well the operative could enter the void.
The letter indicated how well they manipulated it.
Moxs SAPPhO was 45A.
No one else had a number rating over an 84.
Most people could only dip into the void for as long as they could hold their breath underwater.
Binis record was a half hour.
Sometimes you needed a poorly aimed bazooka more than a sharpshooter.
Weirdly enough, all of the cabals voidwalkers were women.
It made her doubt the part of herself that had always felt uneasy with womanhood.
Im barely a girl, she used to say, and feminine honorifics still made her skin crawl.
Some jobs were like killing deer with a chainsaw, or shucking corn with a mallet.
This was one of them.
Maybe she was losing her touch.
Harvey on the dials plus Mox in her ear and things felt like old times.
Bini was listening yeah but really she was thinking about that night they fought at the mall food court.
Before the first split, before they opened things up.
Back when it was just them.
Mox needed someone to make her feel needed.
But Bini had spent her whole life learning how to be enough.
Now it was fifteen years since theyd done a job together.
Getting pulled in for this one felt like the best parts of being married, without all the noise.
That moment of clarity underneath the malls fluorescent lighting didnt matter, because Bini kept it to herself.
She never found a way to share it in a way that wouldnt feel like a betrayal.
Eventually, theyd been apart almost twice as long as theyd been together.
The next day she had dozens of notifications.
Binis fingers must have dragged across the keyboard, posting a string of kjnsddjjkjsdnkj beneath the video.
Mox had clicked the heart button beside her comment.
That almost worked, Bini told Mox on the comm.
It was almost normal.
I guess I shouldnt have been afraid that
You wanna know what your fucking problem is?
She wasnt falling for that.
Ill tell you what your fucking problem is.
Bini knew Mox was punctuating each word with a nail-bitten finger.
Harvey coughed on the line but Mox didnt acknowledge him.
Theres no such thing as normal.
And if there was, I dont want us to be almost normal.
I want you to be a seething wound, because thats what you are.
Im gonna get off this channel, Harvey said.
Good work, Bini.
Nice having you on the team again.
Mox and Bini breathed back and forth at each other until Mox caved first.
Look what you went and did.
Now Harvey is gonna be on my ass about bringing you back.
I have boots more emotionally secure than that boy.
But that boy is in his late thirties now, old girl.
Bini almost didnt mind being called a girl when the word was in Moxs mouth.
But she grimaced in disbelief.
I remember his first job, when he pissed
Thats what Im saying, Bini.
That was seventeen years ago.
Something crunched in Binis ear, like an egg breaking on the sidewalk.
Moxs voice dropped twenty decibels.
Sniper, half in the void.
Fourteenth floor, against the glare.
Ill hang a thread.
But she was gone.
But there were no rewards for her id today.
Hearing that silence, knowing that Mox was dead, dropped Bini right in.
Shed hold him in a second.
When she was ready.
When you die in the void, you leave behind a thin, hollow echo.
The echo of a person wasnt much.
Its a neon mirage with a vicious half-life.
Bini laid down beside Moxs staticky outline, even though she might as well have been holding psychic sandpaper.
The prickly silence between them made things almost like it used to be.
Just one more minute, she told herself.
Just one more minute.
dave ring is a queer writer of speculative fiction living in Washington, DC.
He is the author of The Hidden Ones (2021, Rebel Satori Press) and numerous short stories.
He is also the publisher and managing editor of Neon Hemlock Press, and the co-editor of Baffling Magazine.
Find him online atdave-ring.comor@slickhopon Twitter.
just visitLIGHTSPEED MAGAZINEto read more great science fiction and fantasy.
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