by Kit Rocha
“How about with decent tools and whatever parts we can scrounge together?”
“I’ll assess it.” He tilted his head and eyed Deacon. “Do you have any moral objection to getting parts on the black market in Eden? I can find anything we might need there.”
Deacon muttered something under his breath, then rubbed a hand over his face. “That depends on a lot of things—who your contact is, what they’re selling, how they got it.” He paused. “I could go on.”
Deacon cared about people, too—and not just when it was easy. “Charlotte is a city scavenger. She’s spent years raiding Eden’s recycle bins and bribing servants to pass her broken equipment. I can’t promise she’s entirely virtuous with the money she makes, but her vices seem limited to spoiling her nieces and buying pretty things for her wife.”
“That’s acceptable.” Deacon unclipped a bag of tools from the back of his bike and swung the straps over his shoulder. “Do you know that much about everyone in Eden?”
“Only the ones who are breaking the law.” Ashwin reached for his own tools. “I was head of Special Tasks for nearly a year. I was the one who decided when we moved in for an arrest and when we looked the other way. Educating myself on who they were seemed advisable.”
“Sounds reasonable.” He pulled a leather pouch from his pocket and tossed it at Ashwin. “Forget the tools. The generator needs a new charge controller. If you can find one, I’ll be impressed.”
“Consider it done.”
As Deacon turned toward the building, Ashwin slid back onto his motorcycle and shoved his helmet into place. The ride from Sector One had been meandering, following the river that bisected the sector down to one of the few bridges spanning its width. Ashwin retraced his path to the bridge, but on the other side turned west instead of north.
Straight toward Eden.
The wall dividing Eden from Sector Two had been all but demolished. Just as in One, the stone had been harvested and put to better use—many of the newly reconstructed buildings closest to the city had that distinct white shine. The border between sector and city was mostly intangible now, marked by a lingering, unmanned checkpoint and the abrupt shift in architectural style.
Ashwin roared across the line and into a different world.
Without walls, Eden was even more incongruous. The city belonged in the reality that had existed before the Flares, a high-tech world of soaring skyscrapers and excess wealth. Gratuitous wealth, even—there was little efficiency in buildings that rose a hundred stories and seemed entirely made of glass. There were people whose whole lives were devoted to washing those windows day in and day out, a repetitive, thankless task that produced no tangible goods or commodities.
At least the new Council was reportedly paying them a fair wage. Rebellion had changed life for everyone, and mostly for the better.
Ashwin traversed the busy streets easily, weaving in and out of traffic and around silent black cars idling in front of buildings, no doubt waiting for the important people inside to finish their important tasks. He was glad for the helmet, all too aware that his face would be very recognizable to most of the people in those cars—and that few of them would remember him fondly.
If he was extremely fortunate, Kora would never know just how much blood stained his hands. If the ravens Gideon handed out for every kill were assigned retroactively, Ashwin might not have enough skin to carry the weight of his debt.
And yet, he had the nagging, irrational suspicion that Kora would still forgive him. That she’d lay her hands on either side of his face and tell him he was a hero, and he’d believe her the way he’d never believed anyone else. Without doubt, without hesitation, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
He’d fallen asleep in her bed last night. Not the half-aware doze he was used to when he wasn’t alone, but deep, restful sleep. He was even plagued by the vague notion that he might have dreamt—nothing solid that he could recall, but the sensation had lingered upon waking. Warm, sweet. Comfortable.
Maybe Kora had picked up Gideon’s trick of bending reality.
Or maybe this was love.
A dangerous thought. Ashwin wasn’t inside Gideon’s alternate reality right now. He was driving into the most treacherous part of Eden, a neighborhood where inattention could get him killed. Gangs of street kids roamed the edges of the underground marketplace, looking for easy targets and a quick score.
For that reason, Ashwin pulled off into one of the nicer parking areas and paid the credits to stash his bike. Leaving it unattended for even the five minutes it would take to haggle over a charge controller was asking to have it stripped for parts.
He continued on foot, his hands in his pockets, staying alert for the sound of footsteps scampering behind him.
Instead, after two blocks, he heard the whisper of boots—military issue—and tensed before Samson appeared at the end of the street, looking deceptively casual as he leaned against the corner of a building. “You’re a hard man to find, Ashwin.”
Samson was lying, and Ashwin didn’t need to be able to sense the truth to know it. Samson was Makhai, one of the most cunning soldiers the Base had ever turned out, and he had the full resources of the Base at his disposal.
Ashwin had always considered him a friend. And he’d always been painfully aware of how swiftly friend could turn into enemy if two Makhai soldiers found themselves with opposing goals. “Samson.”
“You look well. Very rested.”
It could have been small talk. Unlike the other Makhai soldiers, Samson had always been good at it. But he knew Ashwin wasn’t, and more than that...he knew Ashwin. He’d been there, helping Ashwin the night he’d flooded his veins with poison in an attempt to purge Kora from his thoughts.
He knew enough to endanger Kora.
Ashwin consciously controlled his muscles. Even a warning flex of his fingers could set off violence. He had the knife Del had gifted him on his belt, and a second in his boot. If he reached for either, only one of them would be leaving this alley. “Did the Base send you?”
“Not this time.” Samson let the words—and their inherent warning—hang in the air for a moment. “I’m here as a friend.”
If anything, that was more chilling. “Why?”
Samson moved, but what he pulled out of the inside of his jacket wasn’t a weapon. It was a folder. “The Tech Division has been upgrading the drone sensors. The project started while you were incapacitated—” he uttered the word without a shred of emotion, “—and they just finished.”
Ashwin accepted the folder, already uncomfortably sure he knew what lay inside. But he still forced himself to flip it open and stare at the surveillance photos showing aerial footage of Gideon’s compound. In the first, he was visible as a bright-blue blob in the Riders’ barracks. Kora was a red smudge in the wing of the mansion she’d claimed as her office.
In the second photo, they were together in the family wing, the edges of their blurry outlines merging into purple.
The time stamp read last night.
Ashwin closed the folder, looked up at Samson, and waited.
“I don’t want to know,” the man said mildly. “It’s better that way for everyone, especially me. But in light of your past difficulties where little red blobs are concerned, I figured you should be...aware.”
Ashwin stilled. He’d suspected what Kora was from the first time he’d met her. Something about her had always felt...familiar. Like recognizing like, though he’d understood even then that the feeling was illogical. Kora interacted with numerous Makhai soldiers, and none of them had seemed to realize she was more than merely human.
Then again, he’d never given any outward indication of his realization, either.
Of course, Ashwin had never trusted anything as subjective as feelings. It had been years since he’d hacked together his first makeshift isotope tracker to test his theory. Years since the first time he’d seen that bright-red smudge that had confirmed his suspicions and upend
ed his world.
“How long have you known what she is?” he asked Samson, gripping the folder too tightly.
“I don’t know anything. Or weren’t you listening?”
“Dammit, Samson—” Ashwin bit off the next curse, aware that the lapse was too revealing. “Do they know who this is?”
“You’re getting soft in your semiretirement, old friend. Or maybe you just don’t want to think about the answer to your own question.” Samson flicked the edge of the folder. “If they knew, you’d be dead. Or worse. Probably worse.”
He didn’t have to elaborate. Ashwin had already thought of a thousand scenarios far worse than his own death. The fact that he was stable would be fascinating enough. Undoubtedly there were other Makhai soldiers currently in various states of fracture. Too easy to imagine them trapping Kora in close proximity to see if she could provide the same stabilizing influence on them. He knew what a Makhai soldier in the midst of recalibration was like—made of enough cruelty to break Kora’s body, and enough pain to break her heart.
And that was only the beginning. Ashwin had wondered what sort of children their combined DNA might produce, but the Base wouldn’t stop at wondering, and they wouldn’t wait for Kora’s consent before harvesting her eggs for experimentation.
Even worse, Kora was old for a healer. The previous generation of Project Panacea subjects had begun destabilizing in their early twenties. Many had deserted the first time they were faced with an order that went against their ingrained instinct to heal. Those who stayed developed substance abuse problems that negated their usefulness. Even the deserters who were eventually recaptured were usually in terrible shape—worn down from the constant death and hopelessness in the world around them.
Kora’s generation had been discarded when the project was terminated. If they realized what she was and how long she’d lasted—not just lasted but thrived—
She’d be lucky if they stuck to studying her. More likely, they’d subject her to increasing psychological pressure in an attempt to find her limits. When that ran its course, they’d start the physical tests, carving off pieces of her until they understood what made her different. What made her useful.
No, Ashwin didn’t want to think about the answer to his own question. Because then he’d have to decide whether to stash Kora in the trunk of a car for the second time in their lives. And this time, he wouldn’t stop driving until he’d put the entire fucking continent between her and the Base.
“You’re a smart man. Highly motivated.” Samson leaned closer, his voice lowering to a growl. “Fix it.”
Then he was gone.
Ashwin barely noticed. The folder weighed a thousand pounds. The photos were damning, and he knew what would follow shortly—a communication from the Base demanding that he identify the Project Panacea healer and find a way to bring them in for evaluation.
He needed a plan. Now.
He folded the folder in half and shoved it into his jacket. He resumed walking, setting part of his attention to monitoring for danger while the bulk of it turned over the problem.
The safe house wasn’t acceptable. It was within an hour’s drive of Sector Eight, well within drone range for the Base. Anything inside of a hundred miles was too dangerous. To be truly safe, he’d have to get her through the mountains and into what remained of old California. There were coastal communities on the border with Mexico where they could easily disappear.
North was trickier. There were fewer communities up in the colder, harsher climate of what had once been Canada, but the ones that had sprung up would value a doctor of Kora’s talent. And they were less likely to be trading with Eden than the surviving cities in the east and south of America—and trade was dangerous. Because if the wrong story got back to the Base…
So, southwest. Even the Base didn’t cross the invisible line above Los Angeles—too many pre-Flare military outposts had set up their own territories along the coast between there and San Diego. If he could get Kora to the other side—
But Projects Makhai and Panacea had operated countrywide. They might retain tracking capabilities, which would put Kora at the same level of risk in a place where Ashwin was unfamiliar with the territory.
The only answer was to keep her off the grid. Away from people, where her skills would atrophy and the instincts inside her would twist into knots until she did something reckless. She’d done it before, walking out of Eden and into the devastated remains of Sector Two. She’d been driven by the call of pain, by the need to practice her skills.
If he tried to contract her life down to something safe, he’d be doing the same thing to her that the Base had done to him. Removing the social influences that kept her stable. Removing the opportunities to express her skills in a way that eased her heart.
The bonds of brotherhood offered by the Riders had given Ashwin the first solid ground he’d ever felt under his feet. Maybe that was what Sector One did for Kora, too. No other place in this broken world was better for a woman whose very sanity rested on the power to ease suffering. Gideon didn’t just allow it. He encouraged it. Demanded it. Taking Kora away from her support structure might break her.
He needed a better plan.
The shady side of the market looked the same as always. Ashwin found Charlotte’s little stand and waited for her to put on her usual act, pretending she didn’t have the part he wanted. Two heavy coins—three times the value of the charge controller—cut through the game, and if she looked disappointed at the missed opportunity for a good, long haggle, Ashwin didn’t care.
He tucked the prize into his pocket and retraced his steps, and by the time he reached his motorcycle he knew what he had to do.
He wasn’t looking forward to it, but he knew.
The trip back to Sector Two passed in a blur. He found Deacon balanced precariously on the roof of the building, stripped down to his jeans and holding half a dozen nails between his teeth. He hammered shingles into place one by one, with no indication that a warrior of his caliber resented being assigned to mundane construction tasks.
When he reached the building, Ashwin held up the part. “I found what we needed.”
Deacon grunted and vanished over the roofline. When he reappeared, he slid down the ladder propped at the edge of the roof, then held out his hand. “Took you long enough. Let’s see it.”
Ashwin surveyed the lot around them as he dropped the part into Deacon’s outstretched hand. The handful of workers who had been there on his arrival seemed to have vanished, but activity buzzed around the building next to them, the wind bringing snatches of murmured voices and the occasional intelligible word.
Not secure enough for what needed to be said. “Is there anyone inside? I have to talk to you about something serious.”
Deacon tilted his head toward the door, then led him through the large, open front room. In the back was the kitchen, an industrial one filled with stainless steel. It was deserted, so Deacon leaned one shoulder against a refrigerator and waited as Ashwin tried to decide where to start.
He could relay the meeting with Samson, but that wasn’t the crux of the problem. The current threat was simply that—current. Unless he cut to the root of it, Kora would never be safe.
Ashwin pulled the folder from his jacket and unfolded it. It fell open, revealing the damning aerial surveillance. He smoothed the crease out of the middle and glanced at Deacon. “You know what these are.”
Deacon stared at them for a moment. “Did someone in Eden give these to you?”
“A friend who wanted to warn me.” Ashwin touched the blue smudge in the first picture. “Project Makhai shows up blue. Elite soldiers are purple. Regular enlisted are green.” He shifted his finger to the hazy red dot outlined in pink. “And red... Red is Project Panacea.”
“What the fuck is that?”
“A defunct experiment. They shut it down almost three decades ago because the subjects proved unstable and difficult to control.” He forced himself to meet Deacon’s
gaze. “They were selected for intelligence, sensitivity, empathy. They were the most brilliant healers—”
Deacon cut him off with a vicious curse and slammed the folder shut. “She hid this from Gideon.”
The urge to defend her was immediate and vicious. “No,” he bit off harshly. “She did not.”
“She sure as hell didn’t tell…” He trailed off, and his hand twitched, like it ached to twist in the front of Ashwin’s shirt. Or maybe slam across his jaw. “She doesn’t know.”
“There’s no way she could.” Ashwin shook his head. “Decommissioned projects are buried deep and highly classified. I had to break most of the regulations on the Base to find information about the final project. Her group had thirty-seven infants, all listed as terminated. The man who raised her or someone connected to him must have smuggled her off the Base. Possibly to continue the experiment under different conditions.”
“But you know.” The words damned him, and they were meant to.
“I know.” He couldn’t meet Deacon’s eyes anymore. For the first time in memory, he was the one who broke and looked away, unequipped to handle the judgment staring back at him. Because he cared now, and caring made him vulnerable.
It made him so vulnerable that he tried to rationalize it. “You don’t know what it’s like to live the way I do. To know that my mental stability has an expiration date that can only be extended for so long. Sixty-eight percent of the final adult generation of Project Panacea developed drug addictions. That was down from eighty-four in the previous group. And that’s discounting the ones who killed themselves.”
Deacon snorted, a derisive noise that dismissed his words without mercy. “You’re full of shit.”
“Those are objective statistics—”
“And they have jack to do with your real reason,” Deacon cut in calmly. “You didn’t tell her when you found out, so now you have to tell her why you’ve been lying.”