The Disasters

by M. K. England

  “Me either,” Zee says. “You two can do what you want, but at least give us a head start to get away. After all we’ve been through together, you can give us that much, can’t you?”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” I sputter, mentally slamming on the breaks. What are we going to tell them at the embassy? We can’t sell out Zee and Rion and Asra. I won’t. We just pretend we don’t know where they are? I hate this. I scrub my hands down my face and through my hair, tugging at the roots.

  “Look, we can only do this once. We haven’t slept in forever, and I’m basically dead right now. Can we please just sleep and make our decision in the morning?”

  Case, Rion, and Zee can apparently agree on one thing, at least; they all fix me with their nastiest glares, as if I’ve personally betrayed each one of them. I mean it, though. My thoughts are a jumbled, foggy mess, and my brain can barely process two plus two right now. This is no time to be making life-altering decisions.

  Asra stands, shooting me a wry smile. “Well, if you all are done tearing each other’s throats out for now, there are a few extra pillows and blankets in the closet by the couch.” She picks up her tablet from the table, swipes it off, and stores it in the back pocket of her jeans. “You could fight over those too, if you like. I’ll be in my room if you need me.”

  The long sleeves of her kurta flutter as she gives us a little wave good night, a bright splash of gold-stitched white against the encroaching darkness. I try to find a hint of malice or deceit in her eyes or the quirk of her mouth, but it’s all joyful intellect and a spark of sympathy. She retreats to her room, and the sound of a sitcom laugh track bleeds faintly through the thin walls a moment later.

  The others grumble, grudgingly accepting the terms. We manage to distribute the three pillows and two and a half blankets roughly equally, and Zee wins the rock-paper-scissors match for the couch, damn her. Rion curls up against the far wall, Case by the door, and me underneath the room’s lone window, folding the pillow in half to keep my head off the hard floor. The silence is tense and angry, and I can’t help but feel it’s all aimed at me.

  It’s bullshit. I heard everyone out, I tried to compromise, and now I’m the bad guy?

  Whatever.

  I turn my back to the room and glare at the wall.

  I can’t move.

  My feet are like grav boots cranked to max setting, pinning me in place as Case and Rion whisper their arguments in my ears.

  “Do the right thing, Nax,” Case hisses, her nails digging into my arm. “Do you want more filth on your record? Your parents will hate you even more.”

  “Her plan is suicide,” Rion says, his voice smooth and even, reasonable, his lips brushing my cheek and jaw as he speaks. “We can’t fight for all those people who died if we’re dead, too.”

  A projection of the Honda Breakbolt Mark III appears, rotating slowly in time with their whispers as Asra lists its features and improvements. Then it’s suddenly two-dimensional, a poster pulled from Piloting magazine, stuck fast to the floor as Asra twirls over it.

  Zee steps forward and hands me a cup of blazing hot tea, too hot to hold. I drop it, and it crashes to the ground. She tuts her disapproval and hands me another, and another, and another, until a drip of blood blinds my right eye. My forehead is bleeding. She tuts again and presses a stinging wipe to the gash.

  “You have to be more careful,” she says, but it’s Malik’s voice instead of hers, harsh and accusatory. “You’re going to get someone killed one day, pulling shit like this. Remember what happened last time?”

  Without warning, Zee pushes harder on the gash, sending a shot of pain through my skull, then draws her leg back and—

  I jerk awake, my hand wrapping protectively around my upper thigh. The pain followed me from the dream, somehow. I blink blearily, then look up. Zee stands over me, her arms folded.

  “You kicked me!” I whine, my voice still thick with sleep.

  Zee grabs me by the arm and hauls me to my feet. “Case is gone, and she took the flight recorder with her.”

  The words are like a bucket of ice down the back of my shirt. I break away from Zee and scramble for my boots, though I don’t know what I’m getting dressed for yet. What are we supposed to do? Wander around town, hoping we don’t get seen, while we search who knows where for Case?

  “That utter harpy,” Rion spits, tugging on his jeans with force. “She’s going to get us all arrested. I can’t believe this.”

  Zee paces back and forth, her fingers threaded through her hair. “We should have seen this coming. She had that recorder in her hands last night before bed, and she was upset. What if she tells them where we all are?”

  Asra strides into the room with her tablet and turns on the main screen on the wall. “If she’s been caught, it’ll be on the news feed. You all are the hottest story on the planet right now.”

  She flips through the channels until she lands on the news. And my stomach drops.

  There’s Case, her face twisted with anger as she shouts at someone off-screen while they haul her away. Her hair flies everywhere, sticking to her face, getting in her mouth as she snarls at them, though they don’t play the audio, of course. What she has to say could be damning. Over the images, a voice-over reports.

  “The suspect, Casandra Hwang-Torres, was taken into custody shortly after five a.m., when she entered the Earth Embassy building, claiming to have information for the authorities. She was arrested on the spot for treason, both for her part in the attack on Ellis Station Academy and for attempting to spread further misinformation about the attacks and the Global Colonization Commission. She will face charges in quarantine at Ellis Station, where she will likely receive the death sentence if convicted. She is currently held without bail at the Earth Embassy, awaiting transport off-world. No word on the whereabouts of her three accomplices or the kidnapped stepdaughter of Saleem city councilman Jace Pearson. Stay tuned for more details on the other suspects and analysis by our in-house experts.”

  Asra turns the main screen off, thankfully sparing us from the “expert” opinions on how utterly fucked we are. I turn back to the others, helplessness written all over my face. The others look back, like I’m somehow supposed to have the answer. I have no idea what to say. We have to do something. But what?

  “What’s everyone thinking?” I finally say to break the silence. We need to move, need to do something, but what?

  “We should get out of here in case she’s told them our location,” Rion says, his face slipping into blank, neutral mode.

  Zee nods in agreement. “Yes. We leave, head to the embassy. We have to try to get her out.”

  “What? No way!” Rion protests, looking at Zee like she’s suggested they throw a party for the local cops. “She did this to herself. It’s her problem.”

  “So you want her to die?”

  “Of course not! But there’s still a chance that she’ll be acquitted on trial.”

  Zee cuts him off with a sharp wave of her hand. “You really think they’re going to give her a fair trial, with this cover-up going on?”

  “If we try to go to the—”

  “They’ll probably execute her the second she—”

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry, okay?” Rion shouts. “I know all that. I know we have to go after her. I couldn’t forgive myself if she got executed. I just . . . I’m pissed, and if this ends up in me getting sent back to Earth, I’ll throw myself out a bloody airlock.”

  Rion covers his eyes with one hand, hiding the shattered remains of his false coldness from view.

  “If it helps at all, we really don’t have a choice,” I offer as a truce. “The Breakbolt needs a two-person flight team. Unless anyone else here knows ship systems the way Case does, we have to have her back.”

  I look to Asra, who’s stayed out of the whole thing to this point. “I know this isn’t exactly your problem, but we could use your help here. Any ideas?”

  “Plenty. And for those ideas, we’ll need su
pplies. Finish getting dressed,” she says, gesturing to Rion, then smiles.

  “It’s time for you all to meet Nani.”

  Six

  NANI, AS IT TURNS OUT, is exactly what she sounds like: an old woman with a thin, wrinkled face, wispy silver hair, and stern brown eyes. She also happens to have arms like a sailor, along with a secret bunker full of weapons and illegal tech. Definitely not someone to mess with.

  Asra embraces her as soon as she answers the door joining the woman’s apartment to the restaurant below Asra’s. They speak in rapid Bengali as Nani leads the way into the restaurant’s kitchen and opens the giant walk-in freezer. The woman gestures at me, Rion, and Zee to shift enormous unlabeled crates from one side of the freezer to the other, which slowly reveals a five-foot-high hatch in the back wall. Nani snatches the tablet from Asra’s hand, syncs it to the lock on the compartment, and with a series of surprisingly dexterous keystrokes, enters a complex string that unlocks the door. Zee, Rion, and I exchange a look, then follow them inside.

  Nani slaps an old-fashioned light panel, and a cheerful glow fills the room, illuminating three hundred and sixty degrees of guns, ammo, and tools neatly arranged on slat-wall displays. My spine goes stiff, and Rion breathes a low “whoa” next to me. Zee takes a hesitant step back, like she expects the room to explode. I grew up out in the country with a police officer for a mother, so I know my way around a gun, but the sheer size and power of this arsenal makes my skin prickle with discomfort. Nani beckons us forward as Asra translates her words.

  “She says you all can stop looking like scared puppies. Nothing in here is going to kill you unless you mess with her, which I don’t recommend, and she’s only giving us nonlethal weapons because she doesn’t want us to hurt ourselves. It’s actually all nonlethal, but she likes to rile people up. We’re a small grassroots group working to undermine Jace, not a militia.”

  That’s a relief, actually; if my ammi taught me anything during our times at the shooting range, it’s to have respect for the danger and responsibility that comes with a weapon. Between that and the horror stories she’d come home from her shifts with, I have no desire to carry a real gun.

  Asra spins on her heel, the solid black kurta she chose for our covert operation swirling around her body, and removes five thin rectangular objects from a low shelf. She hands one to each of us, keeping two for herself, and slides back the outer casing of hers to reveal a foam insert cradling seven tiny metal circles.

  “These are facechangers,” she says. “Very illegal, but they’ll keep us from being recognized by casual observers. One projector each on your forehead and chin, one on the tip of your nose, one on each cheekbone, and one on each side of your jaw.”

  Zee hums with interest. “This is what you were using when we first met you, right?”

  Asra nods. “I rarely leave the house without one these days. Keeps Jace and my brother off my back.”

  She spins again, and turns back around with three tablets. “These are synced to the projectors and already have the app to run them. I’ll help you get them calibrated. I’m just going to say this once, though.”

  She directs a frown at me. “No data presence whatsoever. No social accounts, no location tracking, no messaging. Basic functions only. The tabs are already locked down and net stealthed, but it would be easy enough for you to factory reset and do something to screw it up. Don’t get us all arrested because you couldn’t stand not putting a message on the next inter-colony courier for your ex.”

  I snort. No danger of that happening. None of my exes emigrated to the colonies, but even if they had, my last girlfriend hates my guts, and my boyfriend before her was an asshole I’d rather not talk to anyway. My ammi was never too thrilled about me dating, but when that guy broke up with me, she offered to go arrest him. I love my mother. If the couriers to Earth were still running, I’d be seriously tempted to ignore Asra’s warning, to let her know what happened. I’m sure she and Dad hate my guts right now, but if I could at least apologize for how I left things, tell them this isn’t what it looks like . . .

  Well. It probably wouldn’t do me any good anyway.

  The glow of the tab screen as I boot it up is like the first ray of sunshine after a hurricane. Having to leave my tablet on Earth was horrible, and I’ve been without for over a day. It’s probably a bad thing that I feel like I’ve just had my arm reattached, but Zee and Rion look as enraptured as I am, so at least I’m not alone. Considering we’re about to break into a highly secure facility and probably die, though, I need to rein myself in and focus.

  I slip the tablet into my pocket and start to open the small silver case with the facechanger projectors, but Nani shoves a gun into my hand before I have the chance. Training and muscle memory kick in the second the cold metal touches my skin, keeping the business end pointed away from everyone else. Nani hands a cautious Rion and hesitant Zee their own firearms.

  “Chem guns,” Asra says. “Sleep chem, specifically. It’ll knock out any human on contact with bare skin, so don’t get it on yourself, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” Rion mutters, testing the gun’s weight in his hand and sighting down the barrel at the opposite wall. Zee holds hers with two fingers as though it’s a pair of three-day-old underwear and places it gently on the nearest countertop. She’s got her own natural weapons, anyway, if she can get close enough to kick. Nani laughs in her face and produces a holster to hide the gun at the small of Zee’s back, then slides the gun inside and pushes the hem of Zee’s shirt up to put it on. Guess it’s better to have it and not use it than to need it and not have it.

  Asra’s gun disappears into the folds of her clothing, and she pops the facechanger projectors onto her skin with practiced ease. “So. City hall and the Earth Embassy share a building. I say we use Jace’s city-council access codes to gain entry and wing it from there. I’ve got some friends ready to cause havoc down the street from the embassy if things go truly wrong, but inside, we’re on our own. Anyone have any better ideas? Useful diversion tactics?”

  “I’ve been told I’m a hell of a dancer,” Rion says. “You find me a table, I’ll create a diversion you won’t forget.”

  I bark a laugh. This is going to go so well.

  But also, yes, the table dancing. Let’s make that happen.

  Unsurprisingly, walking around in public with a highly illegal piece of technology stuck to your face is a weird experience. I’m already sweating through the back of my borrowed shirt and twitchy as hell from strolling through the streets as a wanted criminal. The facechangers we wear should make me less apprehensive instead of more, considering the whole point is that they change our faces so we won’t be recognized. Tell that to my paranoid brain, though.

  The tech was a nice thought to start with: something to allow accident victims to wear their old faces over their scars. Took the government all of five seconds to realize it was a terrible idea. They can regulate all they want, but everything eventually ends up on the black market. But Nani hooked us up, so here I am, wearing an unfamiliar face in a crowd of unfamiliar faces.

  The streets are surprisingly busy at six thirty in the morning local time. Al-Rihla is a fairly diverse place, with people of every size, shape, and skin color, though the 30:22 Explorers were mostly South Asian or African, and al-Rihla still reflects that majority. We all blend into the crowd without too much trouble, facechangers active and senses on high alert.

  Asra has traded in her bright blue hijab for a simple black one to match her top, and with her facechanger active, it’s hard to keep track of her as she leads us down endless streets: glittering steel arches over concrete and glass, low walls lining decorative pavers in the Arts District, reeking trash cans atop sharp gravel in the alleys behind the shops.

  The tiny nodes of the facechanger itch like crawling ants where they stick to my skin, but I manage to avoid scratching them off long enough for us to reach our destination: a glittering building with long, sweeping curves and a blen
d of metal and natural wood beams. The crowd around me breaks like a cresting wave, spilling us onto the pavement directly in front of the structure, but Asra swiftly leads us away from the main entrance and around the back to a tucked-away alcove with a single plain black door.

  “Are we ready?” I ask.

  Zee nods and gives me a reassuring pat on the shoulder, her legs coiled and ready to spring. Rion hefts his chem gun with a wry smile.

  “Let’s be bad guys,” he says with a wink that makes my face go hot. I huff a laugh and nod to Asra, who runs the lock codes with a swift tap on her tablet. The door whirs, then clicks, and we’re in.

  The long hallway immediately past the door is deserted. It’s early enough that most people won’t have arrived for their shifts yet, and the quiet hangs heavy around us. We slip past walls plastered with labor law posters and inspiring messages from supervisors, our strides long and silent, with Asra and I guiding the way up front and Rion and Zee covering our backs. The rough clang of the air conditioner kicking on startles me so bad that I nearly twitch a shot of chem at Asra. Fortunately my ammi’s gun-safety drills sank in enough that I didn’t have my finger on the trigger at the time.

  We come up on an intersection, my rattled nerves jangling, ears straining for any tiny noise. Asra taps my shoulder and points to the right, but before we can make our move, a faint click echoes from the left branch of the hallway. Asra drops to a crouch and I follow her lead, my lungs burning with the effort to hold my breath. Footsteps, barely audible but quick—but another door opens a few seconds later, and silence falls again.

  Asra taps my shoulder again, then hurries down the hallways to the right, leading us through a series of twists and turns down seemingly random side hallways. Eventually we slip through a door into what looks like a maintenance area to access a hidden set of stairs. Zee and I have no trouble with them, quietly racing to the top (Zee wins) while Asra and Rion glare behind us. Finally Asra brings us to a halt in front of an unmarked door several floors up from where we started.