Seeing Red

by Lyra Evans

  They climbed and climbed, the cold air in the concrete stairwell cutting into Niko’s chest. His muscles ached with every new floor, but he kept pushing on. A part of him wanted to go back down, to face the police and prove himself innocent the right way. But calling in the Special Response Team at this stage in the investigation was a bad sign. It told Niko that the Chief had already decided his guilt. She would never okay the arrest of an officer without a deep and thorough investigation. Why was she so willing to arrest him now? So fast? Did she really believe Niko was responsible for this? Was the case Sade had brought to the Court against him really that damning? Had Niko lost track of right and wrong?

  The memory of Cobalt, his gun to Vermillion Oak’s head, surfaced in Niko’s mind. And Niko stood there, in the memory, lowering his own weapon, allowing Cobalt to do what Niko knew he would. And in the end, Vermillion Oak was dead, and Niko had argued it was self-defence.

  That had been wrong, by the letter of the law. But Niko hadn’t struggled with the decision as much as he thought he should have. He’d been haunted for days and nights and weeks after his undercover mission with Sade. Haunted by the things Sade had done to him and his reactions to them. He’d felt more guilt about all that than he did about allowing an execution. Maybe Chief Banyan saw that in him.

  But that didn’t change reality.

  Starla stopped at the door to the roof, pulling a lock pick from her pocket. Niko started to react, his expression condemning, before he remembered the circumstances. Starla shut him down with a look and worked the lock until it clicked open.

  The air of the roof rushed in, cool and crisp and cutting. The wind up there was rougher than it was on the ground floor, and Niko zipped his jacket up as they poured out of the stairs. There were no lights up there, but he could see clearly enough from the reflected light of the streetlamps below. There was a collection of police vehicles stationed out front of the building, most of them black and unmarked. But Niko recognized them. He swallowed the urge to throw up.

  “Over here,” Starla said, quietly as possible with the whipping wind. Niko went over to her at the back edge of the roof. Niko’s apartment building was part of a cluster of buildings all connected on the same property. The next one over was shorter than Niko’s, and Starla was climbing up to the edge of the outer wall, pointing down to the rooftop of the shorter building. “We’re aiming for the big, square foam things.”

  Niko stared where she was pointing, trying to understand what she meant. When it hit him, he turned and grabbed her arm to yank her back. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Starla returned his gaze, her expression unwavering. “Not even a little bit.” She reached to grip his upper arm in return, squeezing tightly. “If I can make this, you can. Just don’t hesitate.”

  Eyes bulging out of his skull, Niko looked between her and the rectangular area she’d indicated on the lower roof. It did not seem like much of a landing pad.

  “The distance between the buildings isn’t that great,” Cobalt said, peering over and doing what seemed to be quick calculations in his head. “To jump across at the same level would be difficult, but accounting for the fall, it should be manageable.” He turned to Niko. “I can carry you, if you’re scared.”

  Whether he meant it earnestly or as a taunt to make Niko more determined to prove himself, Niko wasn’t sure. But it had the latter effect, and Niko set his jaw, climbing up to the edge where Starla stood.

  “Y’all are mental,” the other woman said, arms crossed.

  Cobalt turned to her. “You’d rather take your chances with the police?” he asked. The inflection in his question struck Niko as strange, but she immediately dropped her defiant pose and climbed up with them.

  “If I die here, I’m fucking coming back to haunt your ass, Cobalt,” she said.

  “No one is dying tonight,” Starla said. Then, after a pause, she added, “Apart from Sade, apparently. Well. Here goes nothing!”

  Without waiting, she launched herself with as much force as she could from the building. Niko flinched, reining in the urge to grab for her just in time. He was more afraid of adversely affecting her jump than falling over himself. And as if in slow motion, Starla fell through the air in an arc, crumpling the moment she hit the rectangular landing pad. But the crumple had been intentional, and she rolled off toward the middle of the rooftop as easily as if she did this every day.

  Without warning, Cobalt launched himself next. Given his height and build, he managed to jump quite far without needing to put in the same effort as Starla. Niko felt his heart twist in his chest, his throat constricting to the point of choking him. He tried to swallow down the feelings he had, but it wasn't as easy as it had once been. In the time before Cobalt.

  The Selkie landed easily on the landing pad, rolling the same way Starla had. Before Niko could think, the woman threw herself down too, and with a grace he hadn’t been expecting, she arced down to the landing mat like a gymnast. Cobalt held out a hand to help her up, but she ignored it.

  Now Niko was the only one still standing on the roof of his building. Wind wrapped around him, coaxing him down into the valley between the buildings. The Special Response Team would have found his apartment empty by now. Probably, they’d even managed to access the gun safe and realize his personal weapon was gone. They might even have searched Starla’s apartment by now. Any minute now, sirens would begin to wail, alerting the area to the possible danger. Any minute now, the Chief would know Niko was in the wind. They’d go to his car, impound it, freeze his bank accounts, and hunt down everyone he knew for leads. His disappearance would lend credence to the belief he was responsible for Sade’s death. Only guilty people ran, right? Stupid cop prejudice.

  But the glitched number’s message was emphatic. He had to leave. And Uri’s voice had been desperate and afraid. Uri wasn’t afraid of many things. Certainly not when it came to the job. That he was frazzled enough to disclose information to Niko was saying something. And the way the Chief had looked at Niko at the scene… something told Niko he was much better off not cooperating with police in this case.

  So he jumped.

  Air struck his face from all sides as he fell, whipping his hair up and stealing breath from his lungs. Heart drumming a frantic rhythm against his chest, Niko’s eyes zeroed in on the landing pad and the distance between himself and it. Then, as if he paused in midair, he realized it seemed off. There was no way he’d close the rest of the distance between himself and the mat in time. He was going to fall short.

  A thousand thoughts ran through his mind, a chaotic mess of emotion and memories and cursing. He felt his mouth open, but no sound was coming out. He’d always thought he’d die on the job, really. If he was honest. He thought he’d get killed in a gun fight or by some wild and violent suspect. For a brief period, he was certain Sade would kill him. In some way, he realized if he died here and now, Sade did kill him.

  But as Niko approached the roof of the second building, his trajectory just shy of his goal, he saw Cobalt reach out and collect him out of the air. Strong arms wrapped around him and gathered him in, and he felt weight crushing down on him as they both collapsed onto the mat. For a moment, Niko couldn’t breathe, but it was only because Cobalt was slightly crushing his chest. When Cobalt pulled back, giving Niko space to inhale, he scanned Niko in search of injuries.

  For a moment, Niko was warm. The hollow in his chest throbbed, but he felt briefly whole again. And then the night crashed down, and Niko remembered. Cobalt reached out a hand to brush Niko’s chin, but Niko pulled away, getting to his feet.

  Something passed between them, but Cobalt said nothing as Niko adjusted his jacket again. Starla motioned toward the door to the interior of the second building, and without words, they all followed her. The door there was kept unlocked with a fine piece of plastic set against the locking mechanism, allowing the door to shut but not lock. Niko cocked an eyebrow as she led them inside, removing the plastic behind her so no one could
guess they’d come this way.

  “Lucky those foam mats were there,” Niko said quietly to her as they descended. Starla smiled wanly at him.

  “Luck never has anything to do with it,” she said, but seeing his face, it was clear he already knew that. She rolled her eyes at the pointed comment he wasn’t making. “Always have an exit strategy, Niki. You never know what you might have to run from.”

  Like the police.

  “This is pretty elaborate,” he said in response. If he ignored the mild concern regarding her reasons, he was impressed.

  “Sometimes it needs to be,” she admitted as they reached the first level of underground parking. Opening the door, she gestured for them to walk toward the garbage collection area of the parking lot.

  Niko wondered if she had a car stashed here somewhere. But the police presence at the entrance to the building lot meant any cars exiting would be subject to search. How was Starla planning to get them out?

  The garbage collection for the building was in a fenced-off area, lined by chain-link with two large dumpsters sitting below the garbage and recycling chutes respectively. Stopping outside the chain-link, Starla began to peel back one corner of the chain-link along a post. It didn’t look detached until she began to push at it, and it revealed a space just large enough for one person at a time to sneak through. They went in quickly, and Starla replaced the fencing carefully so it appeared whole again. Niko realized there were tiny runes carved into the post at the point where each corner of a link met the metal. She had really gone to some trouble for this.

  “So what now?” Cobalt asked, scanning the area. “You don’t mean us to hide in the dumpsters until garbage collection, do you?”

  Starla rolled her eyes. “No, that only happens on Wednesdays.” Instead, she moved around the dumpster and began to shove at the rolling container, exposing a small area behind it. But it was slow going, and she stopped and glared at the others. “A little help?”

  Niko and Cobalt went to her aid, the woman seeming unwilling to cooperate unless absolutely necessary. When they had pushed it far enough, it revealed an old hatch in the cement flooring. Niko studied it as Starla knelt down and unlocked the padlock to open it.

  The metal hatch door was coated in dust and dirt from years of sitting under a dumpster. There was a strong smell of rotting food and the unique mixture of garbage fluid that collected in these kinds of places. Niko frowned, sure that the hatch was also covered in some kinds of grime he didn’t want to consider. But as Starla pulled it back, it revealed another chute that seemed to line up perfectly with the one that emptied garbage into the dumpster above it.

  “What is that?” Niko asked, his nose wrinkling. The chute beneath the dumpster smelled possibly worse than the dumpster itself.

  “Old waste tunnel,” Starla said. “Before the city moved to its more modern method of waste collection, some buildings employed chutes and tunnels like these to dispose of waste. The garbage would fall through the chute into the waterway below. The water would carry the waste to a disposal site further out.”

  Niko and Cobalt stared at her. Niko was disgusted by the idea, but Cobalt seemed downright offended.

  “You used to dispose of garbage in water?” Cobalt asked, clearly horrified. Starla shrugged.

  “Obviously not for a long time,” she said. “But yeah. It was a thing once.”

  “Have those tunnels been cleared out?” Niko asked, feeling as though he already knew the answer.

  Starla smiled apologetically. “Nope.”

  “I think I’ll take my chances with the cops, thanks,” the woman said, staring down the dingy black hole in the ground.

  “It’ll wash off,” Cobalt said, though he didn’t seem entirely convinced.

  “Where does this lead?” Niko asked, taking a moment to turn his go-bag waterproof with a swipe of his hand.

  “To a disposal site, obviously,” Starla answered.

  “And is that what you meant when you said you knew a place?” he pushed.

  Starla frowned at him. “No, idiot,” she said. “But this is the only way off this property without crossing police. So either you jump into the sewage-garbage water, or you let yourself get arrested and sent to prison for Sade’s murder. I think he’d find that unreasonably funny, actually.”

  Niko grimaced. She was right. He looked between the other three, steeling himself for what was ahead.

  “You all don’t have to—”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Starla said.

  “I’m with you no matter what,” Cobalt answered. The woman seemed ready to say her goodbyes, but Cobalt grabbed her and added, “We both are.”

  Niko ignored the churning in his chest, and he shrugged with resignation. “I’m going to regret this,” he said, then shut his eyes, pinched his nose shut, and jumped.

  Chapter 5

  The sewage water wasn’t as bad as Niko had expected. That’s not to say it was much better, but given the tunnels were no longer in use, most of the grime and grossness was limited to the caked surfaces of the tunnel and less floated in the water itself. Still, the impenetrable scent of decay and rot overwhelmed them as they travelled along, sometimes swimming, sometimes wading. Niko felt the smell coating his nostrils and throat, despite how little he tried to breathe. And there was no growing accustomed to it. Every foot, a new mix of odors assaulted his nose.

  By the time they made it to the end point of the tunnel where the waste water poured out into the designated area, they were mired in gunk and stench. Niko crawled to the mouth of the tunnel to find it flowed out into a small marshy area fenced in ineffectively by one of the Maeve’s Court dumps. Wild animals and reckless youths had clearly managed to break through the fencing. To what end was anyone’s guess, but it made their exit easier.

  The tunnel, however, ended several feet above the surface of the garbage marsh, so Niko reluctantly dropped himself down, bracing for impact. Ground giving under him, he nearly slipped and tumbled face-first into the surprisingly deep marsh, but he stopped himself just in time by catching the rusted handlebars of an old, abandoned bicycle sticking out of the reeds.

  His boots schlocked unpleasantly as he tried to lift them from the deep muck floor of the marsh and step out of the way. When he turned, he watched the three others drop carefully from the tunnel to follow him. Starla was up to her middle in the marshy waters, but Cobalt and the woman were much less submerged. Even in the dim light of the night, though, Niko could tell the colour on Cobalt’s face was off. He seemed—unwell.

  “Well, that was fun,” Starla said, clearly regretting her escape plan. “I think I need to revisit my route for the future.”

  Niko hummed in assent, then headed toward the breaks in the fencing to escape the wet and waste. The marsh smelled more significantly of feces than anything else, and he tried very hard not to think about it. As soon as they passed through to drier land, Niko and Starla began to clear off as much of the rubbish clinging to them as possible, but Cobalt and the woman had more pressing needs. The moment they were free of liquid touching them, they both buckled to the ground, heaving and hurling up whatever had been in their stomachs.

  Without thinking, Niko went to Cobalt’s side to find him shaking violently as he threw up into a spindly bush near the fence. He was strangely pale, and as Niko reached for him, he realized Cobalt’s skin looked mottled and dry in the weak light.

  “What—are you—” Niko began, unsure of what to even ask. Starla crouched near the woman, pulling her hair back out of her face as she puked.

  “Water,” Cobalt said hoarsely, as though he’d spent a lifetime in a desert and could barely manage words. “Please. Clean.”

  Starla looked up at Niko, clearly worried. “Water? I can go try to see if there’s a store nearby—”

  “I’ve got it,” Niko said, opening his go-bag and pulling out a liter bottle of spring water. The waterproofing he’d performed on the bag had protected all the contents. Cracking the cap off, Niko h
anded the bottle to Cobalt who took it without hesitation and downed half of it in one gulp.

  “Any more?” he asked, before continuing. His voice already sounded better. Niko shook his head. Breathing heavily, Cobalt offered the other half of the bottle to the woman rather than drink it all himself. She took it without a word and finished it. When she did, she crumpled the plastic and dropped back to sit on the ground, head leaning back as she tried to catch her breath.

  “What happened?” Niko asked.

  Cobalt still looked slightly ill, but as he shut his eyes and breathed in calculated breaths, he was steadily coming back to himself. “That water was poison,” he said, and though Niko thought it was mildly overdramatic, he wondered if Cobalt meant it literally. “The pollutants in it…I’ve never experienced agony like that.”

  “Do all Landwalkers treat their water this way?” the woman asked, confirming she was a Selkie too. Niko wouldn’t have guessed immediately looking at her though. Her hair was a wild veil of inky black curls where all the Selkies Niko had met had blonde to silver locks.

  “No, that was unique,” Cobalt answered, shaking his head. “Something needs to be done to clean that mess up,” he said. “We almost didn’t make it.”

  A chill passed over Niko, and the realization of what he took for granted struck him hard. But with that terror also rose a spark of frustration and anger. He was still hurt, still angry, still—but the thought of Cobalt being so close to death from something so seemingly innocuous, all to follow Niko… He didn’t know how to parse these emotions.

  “Why didn’t you say something?” Niko asked angrily, settling for a sentiment he was well acquainted with.

  “I had no idea it would be that bad until I was in it,” Cobalt said. “And by then it was too late. The only way out was to push forward.”

  “I don’t get it,” Starla said.

  “Selkies have a very intimate connection with water,” Cobalt explained, somewhat breathless. The half-liter he’d downed was already wearing off, it seemed. “Instead of needing sleep like you do, we need water. Water helps us recover more quickly, restore alertness and health. We don’t even have to drink it, just be in it. But by the same token, polluted water has a detrimental effect on our bodies.”