It had been going so very well for all of them just five minutes ago.
There had been a half-open window. Terrible shame that; not even necessary in this heat. The Older had tut-tutted at it very firmly as the rust ate into its extremities and peeled it off like a grapeskin.
There had been a security door. It had been very fine and very expensive and incredibly modern and it had fallen apart like soft butter under the ancient and tender serrations of the Sleek Shark, its barcodes and binaries and PINs shearing off and away.
There had been a guy at a desk who’d said ‘password?’ and that was where the problem had started because Jimmy had said ‘uuhhhhh’ and no password in the world had ever started like that and they both knew it.
So now Jimmy was hiding in a bathroom being shot at. Again.
“Wish you guys had helped me out,” he said, and convinced himself he’d definitely been trying and failing to keep the resentment out of his voice.
No he hadn’t, the Mind All Light told him.
“Where were YOU?”
Right there. He’d just decided to say ‘uuhhhhh’ instead of asking it.
“Fine,” said Jimmy. He wasn’t sulking.
He was sulking, the Mind All Light told him.
“Am not!”
Was too.
“Am not!”
Duck, suggested the Older.
Jimmy ducked and the top of the bathroom stall sheared off and banged him on the head.
“Shit,” he considered. “Shit, shit, aw shit, shit shit shit.”
So he gave up and listened to the Completely Invincible Lizard.
Four floors later Jimmy kicked down a door shot five security manglers and placed a perfectly flawless thrown ball-point pen directly through the eye of a man in an impossibly expensive suit.
Then he sat down at the desk and threw up for a minute. Stitches.
When he was done he took the very small and expensive computer out of the pen-eye man’s pocket and slipped it in front of the Sleek Shark, which vanished into it without a ripple.
No traces. No records. As if he’d never been there.
Well, besides all the blood and everything. That’d be a giveaway.
It was times like this Jimmy wished he was still a janitor. There’d be nothing but quiet cleaning for days now. Very soothing.
Found another, whispered the Sleek Shark directly behind him.
Jimmy threw up again, almost but not quite masking the sound of tramping feet. Weapons were clicking to themselves, lungs were bursting with purpose.
“Awwwwww nuts,” said Jimmy. And he reached out to the Completely Invincible Lizard again.
***
Jimmy had spent very nearly twenty years on a derelict space station, keeping it running with polish and spit and elbow grease. He could clean anything. Anything.
Still, getting the blood off that stubborn little spot between his shoulder blades was extremely obnoxious.
Don’t bother, said the Completely Invincible Lizard.
“Pardon?” asked Jimmy.
No one said anything.
Well. He didn’t know what that was about. I mean, they had another name, another chance, another link in the long chain of folks that had decided to put people out in the middle of who-knows-where dark space to give them who-knows-who in their heads so they could be used for goodness-gracious-knows-what purposes.
And this time it would be perfectly quiet and safe and fine.
***
When he woke up he was in the middle of a firefight with sixteen other humans in a lobby the size of a baseball stadium, all of whom were larger than him, had bigger guns, and were huddling behind various makeshift barricades and screaming at each other over inbuilt comms. The Sleek Shark was porpoising through their electronic voices, turning them into helpless ripples and splashes.
“Aw dang,” said Jimmy.
Go away, said the Completely Invincible Lizard.
When Jimmy woke up for the second time that day he was standing in a different office, one that looked to have a bit of doomsday bunker in its genetics. There were office chairs, but they were bolted to the floor and had little deployable blast shielding covers.
The woman in front of him had been just slightly too slow to deploy hers. Her head was safe and secure but someone had used some kind of heavy-duty thermal weapon to incinerate everything below her neck.
“Gross,” said Jimmy. He dropped the heavy-duty thermal weapon he was holding and tried to throw up.
None of that, said the Completely Invincible Lizard.
“This is getting a little out of hand, you know?”
Look at the computer.
“You fried it if it was on her.”
In the table.
“Don’t wanna.”
This time Jimmy was awake for the entire firefight, and it was inside his head and he didn’t enjoy it one bit.
He had never seen the Completely Invincible Lizard up close before. He wasn’t seeing it now, but he was getting a very strong impression of teeth and sharpness and hardness and unflinching and uncaring determination.
Around them, uncaring, unceasing, spooled the Sleek Shark. It carried the names in its mouth and it shone very brightly with them. They brought out its smile.
You aren’t doing a very good job, said the Completely Invincible Lizard.
“But-”
And we don’t need to keep anything clean right now.
“Hey-”
So go away.
Jimmy went away.
***
Away was a peculiar place. It was dark and quiet and intangible and didn’t exist but Jimmy couldn’t see or hear or touch or exist either so that didn’t matter.
Things were happening out there. Animate, physical, material things. Murdering dodging sleeping (reluctantly) killing and so on.
It was almost soothing to watch until Jimmy remembered that was him. He’d had him taken away. That was uncalled for and unnatural.
It was very natural, said the Older, at his side. (It was the most brittle thing he’d ever imagined and it wouldn’t break). It is completely invincible. If it wanted to defeat you, it would. And it has.
But that’s not how it works, thought Jimmy. We work together.
Yes, and how often did that happen? You tend to ignore good advice. No wonder it got frustrated. Now it’s out there, and it’s doing what it does. And the Sleek Shark cuts its path, because it can never stop swimming and it doesn’t care who’s there as long as it can move.
Jimmy wondered how the Older felt about this.
Very similarly to him, as it turned out. They both knew about dirt. They both knew about waiting. They both knew about keeping things running. Although Jimmy was a little more laid back about those, and a lot of other things.
Two for two?
The Older suggested that starting a fight between them all might end poorly. Besides, their adversary was completely invincible.
You aren’t thinking, said the Mind All Light. It was warm and full and shining and it was remarkable because none of those things existed there, in away.
Jimmy wondered what he wasn’t thinking of.
It’s completely invincible. That’s in its name.
Yes.
Yes and?
Yes and what?
What ELSE is?
***
The Completely Invincible Lizard was not satisfied. It was incapable of it.
But it was something kissing-cousin-close to pleased.
Another emptied boardroom, another scourged databank, another cloud sucked out of the ether, and another target. And this one was in the same building, so it would have very little downtime needed.
Admittedly, the floors were sealed under standard doomsday protocols, but that was what hacking your way through the ventilation system was for. Also admittedly there were safeguards against that, but that was what the extremely large and destructive blade in its hand was for.
Not that the safeguards merited it. This entire shaft was dilapidated. Dusty and cobwebbed. Disused. Fousty. Cobwebbed. Dry. Cobwebbed.
Are there any spiders around? inquired Jimmy.
The Completely Invincible Lizard realized its mouth was slightly open and shook its head.
Looks like it to me. Big ones. Maybe some other stuff too if they’ve set up that many webs. Crickets?
The Completely Invincible Lizard found itself calculating the length of its tongue.
You’ve got to clean these things out regularly, or you end up with bugs everywhere, under every nook and
The Completely Invincible Lizard launched itself mouth-first at the cobweb, swallowed it and its (long-mummified) inhabitants whole, and lost itself in the wonderful sensation of mashed carapaces.
In that long, long pause, several careful things happened. A few people blinked and turned off and on again.
Then Jimmy opened his eyes and stretched and had hands and senses and the world again. “Everything’s sorted out!” he said triumphantly, as the top of the ventilation shaft opened up and someone dropped a grenade down at him.
The Sleek Shark handled that one.
The Older collaborated on the vents.
And the Mind All Light very carefully persuaded the somnolent and deeply full Completely Invincible Lizard that maybe if it could spare twenty seconds of its time to cross the lobby they could give it a break to digest and bask somewhere for a bit.
***
On the whole, although everyone personally agreed that they’d learned something, none of them were sure of the others.
But then again, isn’t that sort of skeptical and dubious love exactly what most families are made of?