She left out the panic of Executive Order 577, the bureaucratic politispeak that had splashed across her dashboard one sun-soaked morning three weeks ago. All federal bioengineering research projects and guidelines were to be deregulated and placed under the auspices of the president’s private security force. Maya’s stomach had dropped. For a full minute, she’d simply stared at the screen. A vision, a horror show, slowly unfolded in her mind’s eye—the full power of her bioengineering work not simply set loose on the world but left in the hands of these maniacal power-hoarding fiends, for them to weaponize and deploy at their will—and her fingerprints, her research, her passion, the work of her life, were all over it. The horror show kept cycling all through the night and into the next day, when she finally returned to her computer, logged in to a protected locksession with her last anonyport gigs, and started looking for plane tickets.
“Married?” Tristan asked, once the group of revelers had simmered and peeled off into couplings.
Maya shook her head. “You?”
“Once,” he said, cradling his pint in his mittened hands. He hadn’t even taken his jacket off, and he still seemed to huddle into himself as if hiding from some imaginary wind.
“Mm. How’s work?”
The edge of Tristan’s mouth shivered. Terrible, then. “Fine. You know…the fed labs get you the best access to materials and funding, so…I’m about as well placed as a scientist could want to be, really.”
“Ah.”
“I’m gonna hit the head,” Tristan said, standing. “Then we’ll take off? You must be knackered.”
Knackered. Echoes of Tristan’s British father. Maya smiled. “Pretty tired, yeah.”
He disappeared through the crowd. Maya’s fingers wrapped around the vial in the inside pocket of her jacket. She popped the lid. Grabbed Tristan’s half-empty glass and brought it down below the bar, out of sight. Placed the vial to the rim and poured.
“Chilly night,” someone said.
Maya looked up, her heart careening wildly against her eardrums. The bartender—Ruby her name was—with the delicious smile. She lit a cigarette and winked at Maya. It would’ve been corny from almost anyone else, but all Maya could think about was wrapping herself in those big arms and letting those lips find the back of her neck and trace her spine.
“I’m a long way from home,” she said, sliding the empty vial into her pocket again. She raised her empty tequila glass. “Uno más, mi vida.”
The bartender let her gaze linger just long enough to make Maya catch her breath. She was either onto her or in some hardcore flirtstare mode. Then she smiled. Maya exhaled, returned the smile. When the bartender turned around for the tequila, Maya put Tristan’s pint back.
“¿Vámonos?” Tristan asked, reappearing through the smoky haze. All these years, and his accent hadn’t improved. Maya used to tease him about it.
She raised her newly filled glass. “To the republic for which we stand,” she said with a wink and a wry smile.
He clinked his glass to hers and put away the last of his beer with a single swig. Then he clunked it down on the bar and nodded, wiping his lips. “Indeed.”
Maya shot a last glance at the bartender, that peaceful brown face lit by the glare of a cell screen, and then they headed out into the night.
* * *
—
He was slumped against her shoulder, trudging on lead feet through the snow by the time they reached the stoop. Old-style gas lanterns, both dark, glared out of the wall like fallen sentries. Maya leaned Tristan against the door, fished through his jacket for keys. Her fingers wrapped around a small plastic piece instead. She pulled it out.
“Is a TD2900 anonyport encrypter,” Tristan slurred. “Only the betht.”
Only the best indeed. But where would he have gotten such a prized piece of equipment? Government workers certainly weren’t allowed that kind of tech. No one was.
“For you,” Tristan said. “Take it.”
Maya squinted through the falling snow at him, put the encrypter back and pulled out his keys. “You know what I came for.” She unlocked the door and helped him inside.
“Maya.”
Tristan’s cozy Lower East Side apartment was maybe the only thing in the entire U.S. that hadn’t changed during the Trump administration. In fact, it rather looked like it hadn’t changed since the 1880s, except for a few technological enhancements, of course. With the push of a button, a fire roared to life. Taxidermied animals and glowering family members stared emptily from the walls. An old relic of a bureau held the widescreen TV and cable boxes beneath a mounted antique ceremonial sword. Tristan’s cluttered little office space filled a whole corner, facing the curtained window. And the bookcases! They took up most of the wall space. Maya used to come over just to stare at them, reading idly for hours, her fingers sliding against dusty spines.
“I’m glad some things haven’t changed,” she muttered, dumping him on the extravagant green recliner in front of the fireplace.
Now. Now she would find the notes—her notes. And then, while Tristan slept off his stupor, she’d destroy them. She’d use his laptop to hack into whatever servers she needed to, collect as much data as she could, and then be gone, out into the night and on her damn way.
“Maya,” Tristan sighed. “I’m so sorry.” His head hung down over his chest, a little drool.
She crouched beside him. “What?”
He coughed, blubbered. “It’s no good now, you know.”
“Tristan, for what? What’s going on?”
“Maya Lucia Aviles.”
“Tristan, what are you talking about, man?”
“I just…I can’t…You know I tried.” His mittened hand suddenly clamped around her wrist, that grip inhumanly tight. “I’m such a bad…such a bad…”
“Tris, you’re hurting me!”
“Look what they’ve…Look!” The grip loosened and then the hand came out of the mitten. A fine layer of brown hair covered it, and the fingers were long and thick and ended in yellowish clawlike nails.
Maya stepped back, her mouth falling open. “You let them—”
Still looking down, Tristan shook his head. “Of course, Maya Lucia Aviles. Of course. Didn’t have much of a choice, did I? But you wouldn’t understand that, would you? You would never have done a thing like this.” He glanced up, his eyes suddenly sharp. “You got away, didn’t you? The one that got away.”
Maya just stared, her pulse rising to a frantic thrum in her ears.
“But then you had to come back, didn’t you? Just had to. Well, now I’ve done it. They’re on their way, you know. I had to call them, of course. Wasn’t up to me, I’m afraid.”
“Who? Tristan, who’s on their way?”
His eyes glassed over and his head dropped again as he muttered unintelligibly.
“Tristan, tell me who’s coming!” Never mind. It didn’t matter who, really. Whoever had done that to his hands, presumably. The damn Department of Bioengineering, more than likely. Maya hurried over to the office space, started rustling through his papers.
“Oh, Maya, Maya, Maya,” Tristan mumbled. She hurled open file cabinets, rifled through stacks, tore apart binders. “Maya Lucia. Maya Lucia.” A wilting melody tinted his voice now, like a broken music box sliding down a staircase. “Maya Lucia Aviles. Dr. Aviles, if you will.”
“My notes, Tristan,” Maya growled. “Where are my notes?”
“It’s too late, you know.” On the small table by the door, Tristan’s phone let out a mechanical burp. He tried to stand, collapsed with a giggle, then started sobbing. Maya was already across the room, clicking the phone to life.
All clear for go? the text read.
No, Maya typed, willing her fingers to stop shaking. Stand by.
“Numbers,” Tristan said.
She spun
around. He still sat slumped over, his mouth hanging open. “Huh?”
“Numbers. But it’s no good now. No good.” He sobbed once, then shook his head. “But Numbers.”
“Which numbers?”
“Not which. Just Numbers. The book. I kept them, you know. Kept them from everyone. Did exactly what you asked me to, Maya Lucia. As always. As always.”
She dashed to the towering bookshelf, started gleaning titles.
“Ironic, in a way. It’s because of what you said: Numbers don’t lie, just the people that wield them. And we argued, of course, for days, but you were right. You were always right. So that’s where I stashed them.”
It had been another petty debate that Maya took too seriously and let blossom into a full-blown argument. She couldn’t even remember what it was over, and she rolled her eyes at her younger self as she scanned book spines.
The Holy Bible! Maya yanked it from the shelf as Tristan muttered, “Deuteronomy wouldn’t have made sense.” The book opened directly to the first page of the Book of Numbers, where a sheaf of notebook pages covered in Maya’s handwriting was nestled.
Tristan’s phone chirped again and then a heavy knocking came at the door.
“Shit,” Maya whispered. She shoved the notes into her jacket pocket.
“Oh, bother,” Tristan said.
Maya scanned the wall, the bear and bison heads, the desolate landscape painting and sullen family portraits. The antique sword. The knocking came again, frantic now. “Dr. Thomas?” someone yelled. “Open up.” A silhouette loomed in the blurred glass of the window, someone—something, really—way too tall, with long curled horns on top of its head. “Open up right now, Dr. Thomas.”
Maya grabbed the sword. The thing on the other side of the door slammed its full weight against it. The sword came out of its metal sheath with an elegant whisper; it gleamed in the firelight. A fancy metal handguard curled in serpentine spirals around its hilt.
“Garrr!” the thing on the other side of the door bellowed. Maya broke into a run toward it, raised the sword. The door exploded forward and smashed into the mantelpiece, shattering some porcelain vases. Something huge and hairy and horned rushed in and Maya met it with a single downward slash, cleaving a bright red canyon across its chest. The thing stopped mid-charge, collapsed to its knees, gasping. Maya swung again, opening its throat. She stepped back as a flood of bright blood gushed out. She dropped the sword. Picked it up again, barely breathing. Then breathing way too fast. The sword was sticky with beast blood. The creature pitched forward and sighed, twitching once, then again, then lay still.
They’d kept the human face. The head was turned slightly, revealing a tormented scowl, small, squinched-up eyes. She shook her head, breath slowly returning to normal. She’d warned them. She’d petitioned and pleaded and railed. And then, when there was nothing else left to do, she’d burned everything and left. Almost everything. She patted the jacket pocket.
“Backyard,” Tristan said, not looking up. “More are on the way.” Of course—that tiny concrete atrium had a window that led to another building. Maya would come out on the next block over. “I’ve failed you, I’m afraid. Failed everyone, really.” She was already across the room and fumbling with the door locks. The last thing Maya heard from inside the apartment was the tinkling melody of Tristan’s cellphone, and then she was out into the winter night, and gone.
* * *
—
“We never trusted him,” Ruby said, adjusting her position in the bed and lighting another cigarette.
Maya raised her eyebrows, still panting. An old-fashioned gas lamp on the bedside table sent a hazy glow toward the ceiling. The moans and caresses from a few minutes ago lingered, and Maya wanted to just lie there, let those echoes cover her for a few more moments. “But?”
“But nothing. Suspicions are only that until proven otherwise. There are too few of us to be taking each other out on pure suspicion.”
“You knew about the—” She made a clawlike gesture.
Ruby scowled, nodded. “Figured it’d prod him to do better for others. Instead…”
“I think he genuinely wanted to.” Maya scooched herself up in the bed, took the cigarette Ruby held out to her, and dragged on it. “He kept my notes secret from them for all those years. And those notes…”
Ruby pursed her lips, a silent question.
“Let’s just say, whatever they’ve got going on now, what I discovered would quadruple the power of it. Make a murder into a massacre.”
“And now?”
Maya smiled. The night seemed to tremble with the weight of all that had happened, all that was yet to come. “Now the real work begins.”
DANIEL JOSÉ OLDER is the New York Times bestselling author of the middle-grade historical fantasy series Dactyl Hill Squad, the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series, Star Wars: Last Shot, The Book of Lost Saints, and the young adult series the Shadowshaper Cypher, which won the International Latino Book Award and was shortlisted for the Kirkus Prize in Young Readers’ Literature, the Andre Norton Award, the Locus Award, and the Mythopoeic Award, and was included in Esquire’s 80 Books Every Person Should Read. You can find his thoughts on writing, read dispatches from his decade-long career as a New York City paramedic, and hear his music at danieljoseolder.net and on Twitter at @djolder.
THE REFERENDUM
LESLEY NNEKA ARIMAH
Six months ago, I didn’t know a bullet from a bullet point, but here I am, arguing ammunition with my sister-in-law, who (I suspect) has never really liked me and who (I am certain) is relishing that I am very, very wrong. The thing about Darla is that she’ll make her point and then retreat to little agree-to-disagree hmms while you make yours, and if I found those patronizing sounds annoying when she was in the wrong, it’s even worse when she’s right.
“No,” I say, drawing deeper from my well of inaccuracy, “pretty sure these shells are fine to reuse as is.”
I’m so wrong the tiny hairs on the back of my neck raise themselves in embarrassment, trying to make an exit, wanting any nape but mine. But since it’s too late to switch positions, I’m going for the agree-to-disagree stage where I can at least pretend correctness. But Darla isn’t having it.
“You can’t reuse dented shells, even if it’s ‘just a small one,’ because a dented shell casing fires all wrong and you’ll end up hitting everything but what you’re aiming at. Or ruining your weapon. Which is just stupid.” You are just stupid is what we both know she means, just like we both know I’m wrong.
Darla hadn’t known much about guns either, at first, but after the referendum was announced, she began studying them with an intensity that unnerved me. By then, it had already been illegal for almost a year for any black person outside of the military or law enforcement to own a gun, so we—my husband, Marcus; myself; Darla and her husband, Russell; a handful of friends—had trouble finding someone in Minneapolis who’d teach us under the table. But Marcus heard through the grapevine (from whom he would never say) that there was a coalition of black resistance fighters called the Black Resistance, which I thought was a really uninspired name and to which Marcus posited that maybe they had better things to worry about. Those “better things” were a handful of increasingly draconian laws that had been defeated in the Senate by less and less of a margin, until some of them passed and then the kicker was proposed: a referendum to repeal the thirteenth amendment and reinstitute slavery. So while the government was distracted with the protests and the outwardly armed black folks putting up fights around the country, we of the Black Resistance secretly amassed food, weapons, and information. We trained in hand-to-hand combat. We learned how to cook game. We snuck those who needed to be snuck across the country. And because of the laws barring us from purchasing munitions, we recycled bullets from shell casings discarded at gun ranges.
I pull the bowl of spent s
hells into my lap and begin re-sorting them, separating the ones with dents. It is the only concession I am willing to make and, gratefully, Darla doesn’t press. We’ve been sorting these shells for weeks now, and my embarrassment deepens when I realize that someone—probably Darla herself—must have gone through my pile a second time, removing the useless casings I’d let through. It was the sort of long-suffering thing she’d do with an audience present, all exaggerated, audible sighs while talking about this bougie bitch her brother had married.
The bus pulls up and we both walk to the window left open for us to hear it. We are united in our worry until Adaeze disembarks. I’ll give Darla this: She may not like me, but my daughter has claimed some land on her heart. Barren wasteland, upon which nothing can bloom, but still. And her children have claimed some of mine, though I haven’t seen Nyah and Jaden since Darla sent them to stay with their grandmother.
Adaeze squeals when Darla pops out onto the sidewalk, and they run at each other like they’ve been at sea and separated for months and not at all like they did this yesterday or the day before. I can suspend my animosity watching them, listening to their chatter. When she sees me, Adaeze squirms out of Darla’s embrace to hug me about the waist and I return the hug until she’s squealing again, giggling and asking me to let go, to which I reply, “Never.”
Every day she gets off that bus is a day the government hasn’t taken her, claiming some false negligence. Many an activist has been stifled this way, less likely to fight if they thought behaving would get them their children back. Darla and her husband had seen it coming and pulled their kids out of school the day the referendum was first debated on the Senate floor. Darla homeschooled them for most of the school year, but when the census-verification agents came around to confirm the number in their household, she sent the children to her mother, a council member in Atlanta, the only city left where black people could legally hold office.
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