“This is the maintenance access for the floor where embassy security is housed,” she says, projecting a tiny map from her tab. “Once we’re through here, we need to make for this far corner, where the cells are.”
I nod and take a deep breath. Case is counting on us. We can do this.
“Okay. I’ll cover you while you work on the security system. Rion and Zee, I assume you can manage a diversion of some kind?”
They look at each other with an eyebrow raised each.
“We’ll manage,” Zee says.
Rion smirks. I’m going to be really pissed if there’s table dancing and I miss it.
I check my chem gun for the hundredth time and hold it at the ready. “Whenever you’re set, Asra.”
Rion and Zee fall in on either side of me, Rion with his gun aimed at the door, Zee ready to spring at the first sign of trouble. Asra looks back at us, then gives a silent countdown.
Three . . . two . . . one . . .
Asra slaps the control, and the door slides back with a hum—
Someone’s on the other side.
Asra stumbles backward, bumps into me, trips again as she gestures for us to go back the way we came. It’s too late though, no time—I raise my gun and move my finger to the trigger. . . .
Wait.
Case?
Her eyes go wide and fearful, and she stumbles back a step, then hesitates. Her eyes dart from one person to the next, looking us over from head to toe.
Oh, right, the facechangers.
“It’s us,” I whisper. “We came to break you out. Are you okay?”
“What the hell are you all doing here?” she hisses, shoving me back toward the staircase we came from, one hand clutching a stolen tablet. “They know I’m gone and they’re right behind me! And holy shit, who gave you a gun?”
“How did you get out?” Rion cuts in, instantly suspicious, and I can’t blame him. It’s too weird, and she’s already screwed us once.
Case groans in frustration and shoves past us, taking the lead down the stairs. “Did you really think I’d walk in here without an exit strategy in case things went bad? I’m not totally cracked.”
I huff a near-silent laugh. “Should have known Genius Girl would have a plan.”
She’s in hyper-focus mode, though, practically vibrating with adrenaline, and takes the next flight of stairs at a run.
At the bottom, Asra takes over and guides us back to the employee entrance. We race down the hall, motivational posters fluttering in our wake, and make it into the alley behind the building without encountering anyone. Asra immediately pulls a box of facechanger projectors from an inner pocket and gets right up in Case’s personal space, sticking them to her cheeks without waiting for permission. Case jerks back at first, then holds still, apparently getting the idea. Asra cycles the facechanger until it projects a face that looks natural on her, then shoves the tablet into Case’s hands and looks over her shoulder.
“I think we should split up and get back to the apartment,” she said. “The second they get a look at that security cam footage, they’ll be searching for a group of five wandering around together.”
Rion nods. “We should get some new faces, too. They have these ones on camera now.”
Zee takes a moment to inspect Case, checking over her minor injuries, before cycling her facechanger with the rest of us. I’m about to start breaking us into groups for the walk back home when farther down the alley, the employee entrance to the embassy bangs open.
“They’re out here!” someone shouts.
Shit.
“Split up!” I say, and slap Rion’s arm to get him to follow me.
We break off from the others, ducking down a side street with crumbling facades and barred windows, leaping over discarded boxes and stray cats. A shout goes up behind us, followed by thudding footsteps and crashes.
Well. Hopefully if they’re following us, they’re leaving the others alone.
No time for subtlety now. Down a narrow alley first, need to break their line of sight, throw some variables into the mix. Don’t think too hard about left or right, just pick one and go, and again, and again, just like evasive maneuvers in a flight sim. I know they’re still back there; I can hear their footfalls, hear them calling for backup over the comm, shouting our names. If that backup gets here, we’re so screwed. Another left turn, and a dusty, familiar scent fills my nose.
Goats. A whole herd of them, just across the street in a paddock connected to an outlying pasture. Enormous, smelly, shaggy, crotchety goats. The closest one fixes me with a challenging stare. I stare right back.
“Rion,” I say, grabbing for his hand. “Please forgive me for what I’m about to do.”
Seven
WE’RE UP TO OUR NECKS in goats when Rion finally says what I’ve been thinking all along.
“You are, without a doubt, the absolute. Worst. Captain. Ever. Damn you and the horse you rode in on, Hall.”
He’s half laughing as he says it, but I actually agree with him. The black despair threatens to swallow me whole, so I scramble for something to fill the silence.
“Technically the horse is already pretty damned. Considering we crashed it. The ship. And by we, I mean I. That was on me.” I wince and continue, quieter. “And I’m no one’s captain, damn it.”
I hold my breath and shove my tongue hard against the roof of my mouth, trying to hold in the dusty sneeze that’s been crawling around in my nose for the past three minutes. I never thought anything could be worse than mucking out the goat pens back home, but . . . yep, this is worse.
The goats shuffle around us, their hooves scuffing up yet more dust, their eyes rolling with anxiety. They don’t seem too pleased to have us cowering between their shaggy flanks, creeping with long, knee-killing crouch strides and breathing through our mouths as quietly as we can.
The embassy building recedes around the distant corner of the block ever so slowly, and we continue our crouch waddle until we run out of goats to hide behind, which happens far too quickly. I hold up a hand to Rion, then inch my head out from the forest of goat legs. The street looks clear. No sign of our pursuit. Doesn’t mean they aren’t there, though.
There’s a field of high, dry grass beyond the fenced goat pen, but I’ve played hide and seek with my brother in enough wheat fields over the years to know it would give away our movements instantly. Better to make a run for the dark alley across the road. If we can get over there without being seen, we can easily lose ourselves in the back alleys and find our way back to Asra’s flat. Now the hard part: checking the street back in the direction we came from. No way to do that but to look over the goats and hope no one notices.
My thighs and calves burn with the strain of the past thirty minutes as they push me into a standing crouch, just high enough to peek my eyes over the goats’ sloped backs. I catch a brief whiff of fresh, salty beach air, and it’s a beautiful thing, having spent the last fifteen olfactorally drowning in the dry, earthy scent of goat fur and the moist, inexplicably fishy scent of goat breath. I scan the horizon once, quickly, for immediate danger, then slower for more subtle threats.
Nothing.
The streets are empty and quiet, and the scariest thing in view is an alarmingly large pile of goat shit at the edge of the pasture. No shouts. No movement. I’m reluctant to leave the fresh(er) air, but I take one long last sniff and drop back to my aching knees.
“I think we’re clear to get out of here. There’s an alley right across the street we can run for, and from there we should have plenty of routes back to the apartment.”
Rion levels me with a frank stare. “This bastard over here ate some of my hair. I don’t even want to look at my boots.”
I snort, and the goat next to me snorts back. “Still think they’re cute?”
The look he gives me is haunted. “I’ve seen things,” it says. Then the corner of his mouth twitches, and he falls into me, clutching my arms tight and smothering his laugher into my sh
oulder. It sets me off too, until I’m breathing a shuddering shhh! into his ear, broken up by totally uncontrollable chuckles.
“This is ridiculous,” Rion says between gasps.
“You’re going to get us caught!”
He shakes his head against my shoulder and pulls back, wiping tears from his eyes. “Nah, mate, we’ve got the ultimate in goat protection here. We’ll be fine.”
I pat the flank of a big tawny male goat with something like affection and nostalgia. “You guys are a lot nicer than my parents’ goats. Thanks for not trampling us. Or eating my toys. Or spitting.” God, the spitting . . .
“Are you done getting sentimental over these filthy shit factories?” Rion asks, and pokes his head out over the goats. I do the same. When he turns around, our eyes meet. I try to hold it together, I really do, but the corner of his mouth twitches again, and I’m gone. We break down and duck back into the forest of goat legs with hands over our mouths.
“These filthy shit factories saved our lives. I think they deserve your respect and admiration,” I say in a shaky whisper.
Rion lets me know what he thinks of that in no uncertain terms, spitting out mouthfuls of dust as we crawl to the far corner of the pen, nearest the street. I guess not everyone can appreciate a good rescue by goat.
At the edge of the pen, we check for pursuit one last time, then bolt for the alley across the street, leaving a fading trail of literally shitty footprints behind. Crushed against the building wall, pressed together into the shadows from shoulder to hip, a moment of harsh breathing, listening—any boots on pavement? Any shouts of alarm, crunching gravel?
Nothing. Just our own rasping breath. We lock eyes for a brief, charged moment, then slip into the shade of the narrow alley. The relative darkness draws us into the maze of the warehouse district of Saleem. Hidden. Safe.
We make most of the journey back to the apartment in silence, navigating as best we can by barely familiar landmarks and glancing over our shoulders every five seconds. We really shouldn’t—it screams suspicious—but it’s hard not to imagine every tiny noise as an enforcement officer drawing a gun.
Rion holds his hands slightly away from his body as we walk, like it’ll somehow keep him from smearing the filth around even more. Bit late for that. Wouldn’t have taken him for the overly fussy type, but he is a rich city boy, so I guess it’s not all that surprising. The air shimmers with waves of morning heat, and my shirt is soaked through in several places. I’m not exactly feeling fresh. Ugh.
As we draw closer to Asra’s neighborhood, the adrenaline ebbs enough that I can loosen up, and Rion stops walking quite as stiffly. When a turn onto a side street presents a lull in the crowds, he glances my way with a raised eyebrow and a smirk.
“So what’s with you and goats? Your parents had them, you said?”
Oh, here we go. Time to play city boy, country boy.
“Yeah. We lived on a bit of land in North Carolina and had a small hobby farm. Nothing huge, just some chickens, a few goats, a biggish veggie garden.”
Rion doesn’t laugh, thankfully, though his smile widens like he wants to. “Did you have to feed them and clean up their shit?”
“Yeah, I cleaned up their shit. Someone had to, and my brother always managed to get out of it, somehow.” I bite my lip, then glance at Rion out of the corner of my eye—and catch him looking back. I purse my lips against a smile. “I liked them, actually. The animals. I think if I’d ended up stuck on Earth, I probably would have taken over my parents’ farm when they retired. What about you? No goats back home?”
He grimaces. “God, no. My dad and I lived in a tiny apartment in central London, and I went to boarding school most of the year. Any animal in our care would have died a horrible death from neglect in about a week.”
“Boarding school? Really?”
“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably . . . exactly like that, yeah.” He sneaks another glance at me, one that turns into a long moment of extended eye contact, then turns back to the road. “Uniforms, rich boys, laddish banter, latent homoeroticism, and lots of panicked studying so we could all grow up to be Oxbridge wankers and not disappoint our families.”
Oh. Interesting. I clear my throat and work to keep my voice casual. “Latent homoeroticism is the backbone of the British education system, is it?”
“A long-standing public school tradition, if you ask the media. Some of us take it more seriously than others,” he says, and tosses me a wink.
My face burns. That answers that question. Nice. Play it cool.
“So, what, no Oxbridge for you?” Whatever that is. Totally casual question, right?
“Hell no, mate. My dad was a Cambridge man. I wouldn’t be caught dead following in his footsteps, and he’d rather be dead than see me at Oxford. Takes the rivalry way too seriously, that guy. I do miss London, though. Don’t get me wrong, actually seeing the sun is great, but London is just . . . something else. But it’s not worth the price.” He shakes his head, his mouth tight. He really must hate his father.
“Do you have another parent who sucks less to balance him out?” I ask, hoping to shift the conversation in more pleasant directions, bring back a bit of that lopsided smile.
“I did.” He pauses. “Mum died when I was ten. She was always traveling for work, for the World Health Organization. I got to go with her sometimes. It was great, the best times in my life. She’s the one who made me want to go into colonial relations, actually. I wanted to be a settlement officer, help people build their new lives out here.”
I wince. Way to go, bringing up the dead mother and wrecked life goals. Not great, Hall.
We check around another corner, wait for a small pack of children to rush past, then continue on.
Rion shoves his hands in his pockets (finally accepting the filth, I guess) and heaves a sigh. “Look, I hate to be the downer here, but I think we need to talk about Case before we get there. What are we going to do with her?”
I shrug, but my heart pangs with sympathy for Case. I get why she did it. It’s hard, accepting that we’ve done nothing wrong and somehow came out looking like the bad ones. We’re raised to believe that if we do all the right things, the law will protect us. Reality is much harsher, apparently. How many times have I heard my ammi come home, frustrated over some case where a guilty criminal went free because of technicalities, or politics, or money? I, of all people, should have known the opposite must be true sometimes too. Can’t help but hope, though.
“I dunno. I think we can chill, you know? We kind of have to go along with Asra’s plan at this point, including Case. We don’t have the evidence anymore, and this proved exactly what will happen if we try to go to the police. What choice do we have?”
His eyes linger on me for a moment, considering. “I think we all have different opinions on what’s an option in this mess. And I’ve met plenty of people who can smile and say all the right things while still lying straight to your face. I’m not saying I think she’s one of those, but I can’t rule it out. I didn’t see it coming, you know? Her taking off like that.”
“I didn’t either. But we don’t really know anything about each other, do we?”
“Nah, not really. But that’ll change, right?” Rion knocks his shoulder into mine with a small smile. I fight back a grin and nudge his shoulder right back. But I want to get to know Case better, too. What she did was shitty, but I’m not ready to write her off, like Rion seems to be. I can’t help it. I like her. She’s so smart, and good at things, so completely her own person.
And beautiful, too.
The crowds pick up again, and we continue down the streets in silence to avoid notice, dodging potholes and abandoned crates, climbing over low fences, holding our breath when we have to weave through alleys full of trash cans. The silence suits me better right now anyway. Rion’s right. Going through weird messed-up stuff with people gets you close really fast. Like summer soccer camp: throw a bunch of us together for twelve hours per d
ay, seven days per week of intense practice, and it’s impossible to not come out the other side with new best friends, some awkward stories, and a thorough knowledge of who’s hooking up with who.
Normally, I’m down for that. I loved those brief summer friendships. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m going to burn this all down at some point. We’re going to get hurt or killed and it’ll be my fault, because I’ll wreck another ship or make the wrong decision or let my ego talk me into something stupid. It’s only a matter of time. Hopefully crashing the shuttle gave the universe its due, and they’ll be safe from me for a while.
The glorious scent of sautéed onions, garlic, and ginger takes over the breeze for an entire block before the restaurant below the apartment comes into view. We creep up to the alley behind the apartment, and I look around the corner, then wave Rion forward. We scurry up the fire escape like frantic squirrels just as a pack of young kids charges past the mouth of the alley, and we squeeze in through the narrow window, tumbling onto the floor in a tangled heap.
Safe.
I reach out and knock Rion on the shoulder, a goofy grin on my face, my unease fading. He returns the gentle tap with something more like a thump, leaning on me while he catches his breath.
Then I catch the feel of the room.
Stony silence.
Case sits at one end of the couch with her face in her hands. Zee sits beside her with a bloodstained antiseptic wipe in one hand, glaring at the side of Case’s head. Asra ignores them both with fierce determination, aggressively folding origami lanterns and adding them onto the garland strung over her desk.
I didn’t know you could fold aggressively, but there you go.
Great.
Time to play peacemaker.
Eight
IT’S THE WOBBLY TRICKLE OF blood meandering down Case’s arm that finally breaks through the wall of awkward and puts words in my mouth.
“Okay, everyone. Look. I know we’re in a shit situation, but this silent angst thing isn’t going to help.” I cross to the couch and kneel down next to Case.
The Disasters Page 8