by Julian North
Deep in the night, Aba peeked into the room where I slept with Kortilla. I opened an eye as the door creaked. I could barely see in the darkness, but there was no mistaking her presence. She stood there for what seemed like an eternity. Neither of us moved. Eventually, my eyes closed, and when I opened them again she was gone.
In the morning, no one spoke of Aba’s visit. There were a lot of diverted eyes. One of Kortilla’s cousins drove us back to the street where Katrina had her safe house.
“I think I’m never going to get back to the farm, to that pond by my uncle’s house,” Rhett said wistfully as we rode. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or himself.
“No one is.”
We got out of the car near Christobal Street and walked the last couple of blocks, keeping our heads down. Katrina met us just inside the threshold of a battered concrete row house.
“You put this mission, the future, in jeopardy for a frakkin’ family reunion?”
I shrugged at Katrina’s anger. “In the barrio, you trust blood and no one else.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I got the help I needed. You’ve got an extraction team. I’ve got the barrio with me. Enough of it anyway. That place has to burn.”
Katrina frowned. “You do nothing that interferes with our mission. That was the arrangement. Nothing happens until we’ve got what we came for.”
“I’m familiar with the terms. I will keep my word.” As I said it, I was reminded of Jalen’s words regarding his own promises: I will do what I must. Perhaps I was more like Jalen than I cared to admit. We had merely been born in different circumstances.
There were two other men in the safe house. They were both Latino by their looks. They named themselves as Jose and Carlo, but their Spanish was textbook stuff and they didn’t understand Barriola—they weren’t locals. These were men who had been trained to do a job. I probed enough to confirm my suspicions that they were both highborn, despite their lack of hyphenated family names. Jalen wouldn’t have risked it being otherwise. A few other faces came and went from the house as Katrina made the final arrangements for the mission. I counted six people altogether, excluding Rhett and me, although there was doubtless a backup team I wasn’t aware of. At least I hoped there was.
Katrina reviewed operational details with us into the afternoon. She had a great deal of satellite data as well as internal blueprints of the older part of the prison. The exact specifications of the newer, prefabricated portion of the facility was mostly guesswork. According to Southern intelligence, the detention facility had been reorganized into two distinct sections. One held the general, low-value criminals. These were clustered in the western portion of the building. The eastern part of the facility and the newly added yard outside, including the prefabricated chipping units, were separate: different prisoners, different guards, and a lot more security. The plan was to use the criminal portion to gain access to the chipping areas. Jalen and his people thought they had located the offices of the senior administrative personnel and supervising scientists.
“We want this man,” she declared asa three-dimensional image of a distinctly Korean man of middle years projected out of her viser. He had handsome, angular features and streaks of natural gray in his thick hair, giving him an air of distinction. His skin was smooth, his gaze intense, even in the projection.
“His name is Ji-ho Park.”
A surge of recognition surged through me. Alissa had mentioned the name. Lara had known him. He had been responsible for deposing her father. A man at the heart of the juche development program in Korea. And I realized it wasn’t only because of Alissa that I knew him. Kristolan had known the man. She had met him—they had been introduced by Jeffery Titan-Wind.
“What about a Rwandan?” I asked carefully.
“Who?” Katrina said. She looked genuinely puzzled. She didn’t know about Havelock. I didn’t think I wanted her to, either.
“A tall Rwandan man. Any sightings?”
Katrina shook her head. “Our files contain information on several Koreans, a renegade Californian, several others. No one who might be Rwandan. Is he someone significant you know of from the extraction platform?”
“Something like that.”
I wondered where Havelock had slithered off to. Was he with Virginia somewhere? Or had he found another place to make trouble? His last words to me had been enigmatic, but I knew enough about him to know he hadn’t been on that platform to help Virginia Timber-Night. She would have been necessary to get what he wanted, and that was it. A few weeks ago, he had been willing to commit genocide upon every highborn. It made no sense that he could now serve someone as highborn as Virginia. He must have struck a bargain with her. He had provided something vital to her chip research—something connected to me and Alexander, to trilling, and had gotten something in exchange, but I wasn’t sure what. Remembering the fervor in his eyes made me tremble. My ignorance of Havelock’s plans was even more frightening than the prospect of breaking into a chipping facility packed with Virginia’s guards.
Katrina equipped Rhett and me with Authority uniforms and standard-issue force pistols. “We’ll meet our ride in the garage around the corner in thirty minutes.” She disappeared to deal with other details while Rhett and I prepared for what was to come.
“You don’t need to come with me, Rhett. And don’t give me your Southern gentleman’s honor crap, or that damn happy smirk. You could go help Kortilla, and you’d still have plenty of opportunities to get yourself killed.”
That damn grin slipped onto his face anyway. It fit him like a pair of old socks. Whatever had shaken him in Bronx City had apparently been banished. “Why are you so anxious to be rid of me? You didn’t shower this morning either.”
I forced myself not to smile. “Twice I’ve done something like this—used my power to break into a place filled with men with guns and secrets. Each time, something has gone wrong; each time, there has been a cost. My brother is in there, my friends are in there. That’s why I’m going. You don’t need to be here, and I would feel better if you weren’t.”
“I made a commitment to my uncle, and to you.”
“I’m telling you not to come, dammit.”
The grin vanished, and Rhett’s eyes met mine. “It’s my duty.”
I scowled. “There is no such thing. Blood matters, but no one in there is your blood. You and Alexander, with your honor, your duty, you’ll end up dead or worse.” I gritted my teeth. “To hell with you both.”
I turned my back on him and checked the safety on my force pistol. My blood was surging. I wanted to get this over with.
“They love you, you know,” Rhett said, his voice soft.
I wheeled around. “Who?”
“All of them. At the apartment.”
I waved away his words. “They’re my family—loco, but family all the same.”
“It’s more than that.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I was almost glad when Katrina showed up. “It’s time to get moving.”
We started toward the door. Katrina placed a hand on my shoulder, her grip like a viser. “Are you sure you can do this?”
“I will do whatever I must to get my people out of that place. I promised to help you as well, so I will.”
She released me. I guess that was good enough. She didn’t really have a choice.
Less than five minutes later, an eight-wheeled transport marked with only the ArgoGood redwood tree pulled inside the old garage where Katrina, Rhett, Jose, and I waited. Carlo and another of Katrina’s team, Haley, were waiting for us inside the rear hatch. Haley was a squat woman with a thick waist and braided midnight hair that matched her skin. I wouldn’t have thought her dangerous if I’d met her on the street, but that was probably the point.
“Any problems?” Katrina asked.
“An overly diligent supervisor, unfortunately,” Haley said. Katrina stared at the blood on the floor of the transport. Her lips turned into
a deep frown.
“Clean that up. Where’s the body?”
“In the back.”
“We can leave it here. By the time anyone finds it, this will all be done.”
Katrina’s team scrambled into action. They hauled out the dead body of a man wearing a white ArgoGood uniform and tossed it unceremoniously onto the hard concrete floor of the garage. I stared at the dead face. He looked like a barrio man—wrinkled skin, broken hands. These people had killed a local doing his job. More blood taken from those who had suffered enough. I already hated this mission.
Katrina’s people were efficient. It made me wonder how many times they had done this before. In less than ten minutes, the body had been hidden and the transport looked like any other ArgoGood supply transport rolling around Bronx City.
“I would’ve thought the Yanks would’ve confiscated Jalen’s family’s property, particularly ArgoGood,” Rhett said as the transport’s rear hatch closed.
“They did,” Katrina told him. “ArgoGood’s various businesses have been divvied up between Virginia’s cronies. The Titan-Wind family got the lucrative supply business, along with the trademark.”
“She gave them the ArgoGood name as well?”
“She sure did. Jeffery Titan-Wind may end up changing it, egotistical slug that he is, but it’s been less than a week. Takes time to repaint trucks. Or reprogram passwords. Jalen provided us with enough information to access their delivery network and computers. We knew exactly where this transport was, and the Fishkill Detention Center will be getting their supply delivery right on time.”
We rolled through the streets of Bronx City. It was late afternoon, but the fading sun provided plenty of light. There was nothing to be done about the timing—the prison got its deliveries during regular working hours. If everything went according to plan, it wouldn’t matter. If I could do what I had promised, we’d make it inside.
“You’re up next, Daniela. We think there’ll be two guards to meet the truck. We don’t want to risk killing anyone upon arrival. This is an infiltration mission—we need those guards to be fine with our presence.”
“Dock workers aren’t likely to be highborn. I can handle two. They won’t even remember seeing us.”
“That’s what I want to hear.”
There was no light in the back of the transport. I tracked the route in my mind, estimating our progress by the turns and bumps on the rough roads. We slowed just when I expected us to. We were outside the ugly gates of Fishkill. Silently, I vowed that I would not leave that place without Mateo and the others.
Chapter 11
The transport came to an abrupt stop as we reached the prison gate. There were a few scattered shouts outside the vehicle, but they were the calls of the bored, not the alarmed.
One voice rose above the others. “Transport coming through. Open it up.”
The sounds of crunching metal rang out, the prison’s gate rattling and rolling to permit a scheduled delivery to enter the grounds. The guards hadn’t even bothered with a visual inspection.
The transport started moving again. I imagined us passing through the ancient reinforced concrete wall that surrounded the old detention facility, the guards watching from ten-story security towers located on the northwest and southeast corners. The watch posts were crumbling, but I guessed that the prison’s defenses had been reinforced since the chipping prefabs had been installed.
After a short drive over several speed bumps, the transport’s autodrive brought the vehicle to a halt and the engine powered down. We were there. I reached for the cold, nervous that it would balk at my summons. Instead, it came eagerly. The chill filled me, made me whole. Somewhere within me, a presence that was once Kristolan luxuriated in the power flowing through us.
Katrina whispered in the dark, “I’m going to send out a pulse to disrupt all electronics as soon as the hatch begins to open, including their surveillance cameras. It’ll last twenty seconds tops. Hopefully it’ll look like a power surge.”
The transport’s rear door emitted a faint hum, then the mechanisms unlatched. Hydraulics opened the door. I trilled at the two minds waiting outside as soon as light broke into the interior compartment.
“You see nothing but food supplies.”
The compulsion slammed into the heads of the men outside. They were bored minds, thinking only of their shift ending in an hour, of the amusement they would seek in the net vids afterward. A dark part of me reveled with the ease in which I bent the will of others to mine. You are so much more than them, Kristolan’s voice assured me. Katrina and her team ran from the transport as the hatch opened, not quite believing that the men operating the loaders didn’t see them. Rhett yanked me from my stupor. We were the last to leave the transport.
The prison loading dock was little more than a rusted metal roof attached to a massive, square concrete chamber with a crumbling ceiling and a decade’s worth of debris that no one had bothered to clean. Katrina led us through the narrow tunnel used by the auto-lifters into an interior storage room piled high with identical square crates that could be differentiated only by their color and the barcodes emblazoned on their sides. There were two exits, but only one was labeled “To Cafeteria.”
Katrina led us through that door and down the corridor. Staff walked past us, attending to their own tasks. They wore the drab brown overalls of custodial employees, and they carefully avoided making eye contact with us. We looked like Authority guards in our uniforms, and the two very different levels of employees did not mingle.
The prison cafeteria was massive and depressing, filled with line after line of long tables and backless benches. It was also empty at this time of day. Prisoners in the east wing ate at five o’clock, prisoners in the west at five forty-five. That was one of the flaws in the security of the makeshift division of the detention facility: there was only one cafeteria for the whole place. Southern intelligence judged the cafeteria the easiest way to pass from one side of the facility to the other.
We walked into the sprawling kitchen as if we belonged there. Prisoners labored in front of steaming cauldrons and hauled badly fabricated sustenance from clattering processing machines amid odors that were anything but appetizing. They snuck a few glances at us but kept their eyes downward and didn’t break from their assigned tasks—six guards meant trouble. Their supervisor was a beefy man with a crooked jaw and swollen hands.
He stared at Katrina, an ugly, hungry gaze. I didn’t like his face or him.
“You all lost or somethin’?” he asked as he approached us. To Katrina, he said, “Don’t think I’ve seen you before. Nope, definitely not. I’d remember you.”
I took a step forward and trilled him, my voice a whisper. “Make sure the burners have been properly turned off. Use your hands for that inspection.”
That would do it for the kitchen supervisor. There was another sentry at the kitchen exit that would give us access to the restricted eastern portion of the prison, but I handled him just as easily.
“No need to run your old friends’ identification through the machines. Your shift is almost over. You’ve done enough today,” I told him. The sentry waved us through with a knowing grin.
When we were out of the kitchen, Katrina turned on me. “That crap with the kitchen supervisor wasn’t necessary. There’s too much at stake to screw around with having people roast their own hands. I didn’t take you for a cruel one.”
I flushed, because she was right. I wasn’t sure if that stupidity had come from the real me or someone else.
“Teams split here. Stay cool. Extraction to begin in thirty-one minutes. Good luck.”
Katrina fixed me with a frigid stare before motioning that Rhett and I should follow. She led us toward the executive offices, where we hoped to find Ji-ho Park and others like him—people who could explain the mysterious defections from the South. The other four team members had different missions. One pair was assigned to study the chipping equipment and extract whatever information t
hey could from the prison’s computer or other systems. The other two—Jose and Carlo—were supposed to look for my brother, Nythan, and Kortilla’s family. I wasn’t just counting on them, though. I had my own plan.
Our route wouldn’t bring us near the cell blocks, even though that was where I wanted to go. I ached to run down those long, drab corridors, shouting my brother’s name. It would mean chaos, of course, but I wanted it just the same. I was so close, yet so far. Same as always.
We passed several guards, but no one challenged us in our Authority garb. The changes to the operation of the prison were still new—proper security protocols hadn’t been established yet. It wasn’t until we reached the executive offices that the real trouble began.
We took an ancient elevator with manual push buttons up to the fourth floor of the facility. The elevator opened and we were greeted by a young Authority officer with eager, sky-colored eyes. I probed him. He wasn’t highborn. I thought luck had finally sided with me, until I looked behind him. The elevator had dropped us off at the intersection of two corridors. The lobby area had been converted into a makeshift security station. Behind the Authority officer was the cold stare of wary eyes. They belonged to a shaven-headed Korean man outfitted in a dark gray military uniform emblazoned with the twin-starred yin and yang symbol of unified Korea. He placed his hand next to his pistol as we stepped off the elevator.
I overwhelmed the mind of the Authority officer who was assigned to confirm our identities, but it was too late. The Korean walked over to the security desk. His hand was on the handle of his pistol. His mind had presence—and power. His face was perfectly symmetrical, his features stiff and suspicious. I had no doubt he was highborn. I wondered if Katrina realized it as well, or if she was expecting me to get us out of this.
“Who are these people?” the Korean demanded of the Authority officer in badly accented English.
Katrina's eyes flickered, searching the room, looking everywhere except at the Korean. What was she looking for? Security cameras. She wanted to know if this section was monitored. My guess was that it wouldn’t be. Nobody wanted a record of the high-ranking Koreans and other people working here. This wasn’t the type of research anyone involved wanted evidence of.