by Jenn Lyons
grandmother with the way he pawns off leftovers on me. The only cooking I ever do involves explosives or mixed drinks. Even my time with the Fallen Angels couldn’t turn me into a cook.”
I tossed back my drink; cachaça made me think of the Amazon and the Fallen Angels, also of Rio de Janeiro and the Kaimer School. I wondered if Ian’s little cocktail book had had any recipes for batidas.
Sloppy, sloppy; I should never have assumed that Tirris Vahn wasn’t ruthless enough to use a bomb in a megacity. I damn well knew better. Medusa had warned me that it might be a booby trap. How many dead because I tried to be clever? Zach would never have made that mistake: he’d have waited and watched and been ever so patient, taking them out one by one instead of trying to force their hand. Even Duncan would have cautioned me to find out more information first. Never use the door they give you. I could feel my old teachers’ disapproval though the years and the memories. Never let your enemy dictate the terms of engagement. Never let your enemy control your actions. Control theirs.
Ah, Ian, I’m so sorry.
“Why did you leave them?”
I glanced at Vanessa in surprise and tried to remember what we’d been talking about. “Wait—who? The Fallen Angels?”
“Yes.”
I stared at her until she looked uncomfortable and turned away. “You know I didn’t leave them. They died. Someone had set a trap for us: a research outpost we thought was abandoned, but was wired to explode.”
“And you were the only survivor.”
“You know damn well I was.”
“As always. It’s not very safe to be your friend, is it?” Her voice was bitter, taut. She topped off her glass from the pitcher.
“You want me to disagree with you?”
“No. I want you to tell me what’s going on.”
“I’d tell you if I knew.”
“Rubbish. You absolutely would not. How many friends do you have left? I think it must be a very short list, and growing shorter. You don’t dare take the chance I might find out enough to put myself in danger.”
“Nessa...”
“No.” She shook her head. “Ignorance is not a safeguard, and deep down, you damn well know that. The two people I love most in the whole world were involved in this, and one of them is dead: I deserve to know what happened.”
“We’re not talking about a single cause. That kill squad today was after me because of the Black Flag. I don’t think it had anything to do with Paul’s death. I was back in a Megacity, I was traceable, there was a window of opportunity: they took it. That’s it.”
She put down the glass and the fork, stood up and leaned across the table. Vanessa stared at me with glassy, bright blue-violet eyes.
“Fuck. You.” she said.
I stared. “Vanessa!”
“No!” She slammed her hands down on the table and made the silverware jump. “No. Damn it! How dare you! How DARE you think that you can do this to me! How dare you think that you can drop me off on some League planet like I’m a child being left with the nanny! What kind of friend can you be when you didn’t even think to call to let me know that Paul has been murdered! And now? Now you are going to dismiss me like I am a servant-caste, put me nice and safely out of your own way, for your own convenience, make my choices for me for my own good, because you know better, and salve your conscience by telling yourself it is for the best that you don’t treat me like a friend because all your friends die! You damn coward, you do not get off that easy!”
I stared at my plate. I didn’t dare look at Vanessa, not as angry as she was, not with all that emotion directed so ballistically at me. I could feel the edges of her mind, hot and furious and righteous. I was terrified by what I would see behind those eyes. I felt something inside me crumble and collapse in on itself, deep in my core. I sat there for—well, I don’t know for how long, exactly. A long time.
Some infinity later, I heard movement to the side: Vanessa standing up, walking to the side of the room. She opened one of the Aegis’ drawers and presented me a cigarette and lighter. Numbly, I took both, fumbled with them, and finally managed to light the damn thing. I closed my eyes and didn’t look at anything.
I heard coughing and, startled, looked up to see that Vanessa had lit a cigarette herself.
“Damn things,” she muttered. “It’s been years. Filthy, disgusting habit.”
“Vanessa, you don’t smoke.” I stared at her like I had never seen her before—perhaps that was even true. Had I ever really seen her? Or had I just slapped her with a mental label of ‘dilettante,’ ‘scholar,’ or ‘socialite’ because that was more convenient?
“I don’t. Well, not anymore. I did for a little while. Did I ever tell you I was with a striketeam for six months?” She smiled, mocking and sad.
“What? Wait—WHAT? You were a striker?” I stared, dumbfounded. It was impossible. Not Vanessa. My mind refused to put her in the Wilds, refused to picture her crouched behind a hillock with mud smeared on her face waiting for a Sarcodinay to cross the next rise.
“Oh, no. I didn’t serve with them. I traveled with them.” She sniffed. “I was living in SIXTEEN.two back then, and working on this new power plant design, all very hush-hush. Their team ‘geek’ accidentally tunneled into our computers, thinking it was the inventory system for a Sarcodinay battery storehouse, and then of course all hell broke loose. When the strikers found out what we were actually working on, well...” She smiled. “They changed their plans.”
“And you defected.” I smiled at her, proud.
She snorted. “No, darling, they kidnapped me. Right out of a megacity, faster than you could tell me the number of primes in 10,000. I wasn’t given any choice in the matter. Better than what happened to poor Gala-Stephens, I suppose.” She flicked cigarette ash into her empty glass. “I sometimes think the only reason I lived was because their team sniper—this lovely little teenage cherub of a boy with the most amazing blue eyes—appointed himself to be my guardian angel and made sure I never took a stray maser.”
“I always thought you wanted to join the League?”
Vanessa shrugged. “This is going to sound terrible, but why on earth would I? I had a penthouse with a fantastic view, season glad-fight tickets, free access to any restaurant or entertainment I desired, an unlimited personal adornment allowance, permission to choose my own mate, and I was publicly recognized as one of the eminent scientists in my field. Visiting Sarcodinay would walk right past Gala-Mal Norus and shake my hand.” She shook her head, tossing red-gold curls over her shoulders. “They would have killed me if I hadn’t gone with them, and then it was six months of dodging hunter machines and Sarcodinay patrols who all assumed I must have left willingly, of making our way across the Siberian tundra with what we could scrounge, trade or steal. I had a first row view to atrocities that I had no idea were occurring, because of course it’s not like the Sarcodinay were going to tell us. I spent a great deal of my time talking to Wilders and escaped Urbans, people who lost family and friends, some to the mines and most just because there’s no real health care to be had out in a QZ, unless you were lucky enough to stumble across Eden.”
I snickered. “Sure and if you’re going to find Eden, it might as well be Avalon or Brigadoon, or some other fairy tale place.”
She didn’t argue with me. “Anyway, I suppose I was an easy convert, as such things are measured. When they finally managed to arrange for transportation, I was ordered out to Prometheus to work on Janus, where no one particularly cared or wondered that I’d survived on a striketeam for three months longer than the average.”
I smoked my cigarette, then snickered. “So you’re saying you were actually escorted out by a striketeam in a silver-plated shuttle?”
She blushed as she stammered: “It wasn’t silver-plated...more of a camouflage pattern.”
I snorted.
She glared at me. “Don’t change the subject!”
I raised an eyebrow. “There was a subject in all that? I thought we w
ere sharing war stories.”
“You know damn well there was a point. And?”
“It’s dangerous. I—”
“Crossing the street is dangerous. Moving into a new apartment is dangerous. Life is fraught with peril. Sooner or later, breathing kills us all.” She waved her cigarette. “How shall you protect me from that?”
I inhaled deeply, held it, exhaled slowly. “I would feel better if I didn’t have to worry about you.”
“Too bad; it’s not your decision.”
I snapped my teeth together. “Paul was a trained field agent. I never had to watch his back—”
“And what good did that do him?” She said it like a slap across my face.
I rubbed my jaw and didn’t answer.
“You are not leaving me out of this,” she insisted.
“You don’t know how to fight, Vanessa.”
“So? I know how to think.”
“Touché.” I sighed and swirled the last of my batida in its glass. “What a pair you and Campbell would make. Neither one of you is willing to just leave this alone and let me do what I have to do.”
She frowned. “Campbell? Who’s Campbell?”
“An MOJ Detective who’s decided to adopt me. You’d like him.” I paused, then told her in a confiding tone, “You should steal him away from me. It would be good for both of you. He’s stubborn, smart, and in serious danger of coming down with a terminal case of heroism. He thinks I’m some pretty princess who needs to be saved, and that’s going to