Read Online Cronix by James Hider - Free Book Online

very kind.” Oriente gently reprimanded the angel before him.
    She shrugged. “Not untrue though. You should have seen your face when you caught sight of her just now.”
    “She’s a local, Lola. They can’t all match up to your perfect standards.”
    Lola flashed a coy smile. “Ha! That’s where you’re wrong, Senor Oriente. Not about my perfection, of course, there’s no disputing that. But she’s not local. She’s from up there.”
    “Really? What the hell happened? Is that some kind of a fashion statement? An anti-beauty thing?”
    Lola laughed, throwing her head back in a way that brought out the sinuous lines of her neck. Oriente found himself hopelessly staring again.
    “No, she’s no fashion statement. She was sentenced to look that way.”
    “Sentenced? For what?”
    “She’d done some bad things up there. Very bad things. Almost got the Zone as punishment. But she had a good lawyer. She got life here instead…shhh, here she comes.”
    Nurse Shareen waddled back into the room with a carafe of water and a plate of scrambled eggs on a tray. “Don’t worry, I never spat in your food, no matter what this harpy says,” she said, raising her chins at Lola. “And I can hear you from the nurses’ station. I may be ugly, but I’m not fucking deaf.”
    Lola giggled and Oriente gaped at the pair of them. Shareen banged the tray on the bedside table and stood with ham-like fists on her broad hips, staring at them both defiantly. One last sneer and she turned on her heels and clumped off.
    “Jeez,” whispered Oriente. “What did she do?”
    The delightfully carefree expression faded from Lola’s divine features. “What did she do? She was found guilty of transporting Tamagochiite children to Earth.”
    “Ikwan…you mean the kit kids? Ones that people build themselves, up there?”
    “Yeah, that’s the ones,” she said. She leant over and straightened his blankets, pulling so hard that some of the water slopped out of his glass. “Not everyone can afford to come back to Earth and have real kids, so you get kits to build your own. Under the Law of Return, they’re never allowed to come to Earth. Of course, a lot of them grow up with identity problems when they realize they’re not ‘real,’ whatever that means. They run away, and there are gangs that smuggle them to Earth.”
    “Doesn’t sound such a bad thing,” said Oriente. “Seems almost charitable.”
    Lola snorted. “It would be, except to get here costs the kids a fortune they don’t have. So the nice people who smuggled them demand repayment. They end up in brothels and snuff movies and all sorts of sick stuff.”
    “And Nurse Shareen was involved this trafficking?”
    ”Uh huh. She was a procuress, if that’s the word. Searched the cities up there for poor kids, offered them a future. The guys she was working with down here got packed off to the Zone. And good riddance to them. She was lucky, she just got subspeciation. Which is the technical word for being sentenced to live and die as an old-fashioned human being. Seems to me she got off pretty lightly.”
    “I guess,” said Oriente. “And the …” he lowered his voice… “The body, the look. Was that part of the punishment?”
    Lola grinned again. “The judge said she committed an ugly crime, and her life here should reflect that fact. Every time she looks in the mirror, she’s gonna be reminded what an ugly person she is, inside and out.”
    Oriente shook his head. “And they let her work here? In a hospital?”
    “Gotta work somewhere. And with that frame, she’s good for heavy lifting. Guess she might atone.”
    “There’s no danger she’ll…I don’t know, run off and look for a way to get another body. Get a chip and get back up there.”
    Lola shook her head. “She’s free to go. But where would she run to? The woods are full of Cronix and wild animals, and she’s not exactly built for the outdoors. If she ever managed to get a rogue chip, the DPP