“Our meeting is downstairs. We’re not leaving the building. You two are to stay inside until we get back. The longest we should be is about an hour”―she shifted her gaze to Pope―“unless he’s full of questions.”
“Okay.” Disappointed, Maya stared at her lap.
“I mean that. You two stay inside. Don’t go out and don’t open the door for anyone but us. Weber’s watching the front, so if anyone shows up we don’t expect, we’ll come running.”
“Yes, Mom,” said Maya.
“While we’re down there, I mean to get a good answer outta Harlowe about the Sanc.” Genna squeezed Sarah’s shoulder. “If there’s any possible way to get you in there to visit your father, we’ll go in a couple of hours, ’kay?”
“All right. Thanks.” Sarah almost smiled. She collected the bowls and spoons and carried the stack to the sink to wash.
Maya picked up a towel and stood beside her.
Pope retrieved his rifle from the bedroom before following Genna out.
“I wish she would stop saying mean things about my dad,” muttered Sarah.
“Sorry. She’s not saying it to be mean. It is a little weird that he won’t buy you important stuff like clothes.”
Sarah handed her a bowl. “He did. I kept having my stuff stolen. He told me not to go out and scav, but I didn’t listen. Those camo pants I liked, he just bought ’em like three days before the dosers robbed us. He got pretty mad at me, yelled, ‘You must like not havin’ any clothes. Zat why all yer wee friends call ya Faerie? Since ya like it so much, ya can stay that way for a little while.’”
“Wow. That’s mean.” Maya frowned. “Was he drunk?”
Her face reddened; she leaned both hands on the counter. “No!”
Maya worked the towel around the bowl in silence and set it on the table, planning to drag a chair over to the counter and climb up to put all four away at once.
“Maybe.” Sarah bowed her head. “He might’ve been a little drunk—and angry. He always gets angry when someone tries to hurt me. I think he was mad at himself for not being out there to protect me.” After a minute of silence, she sighed again. “Okay. He was a lot drunk.”
Maya put an arm around her. “He’s trying to do the best he can.”
“Yeah,” said Sarah, the onset of cry in her voice as she worked the cloth around the next bowl. She didn’t speak for a little while. After handing the bowl into Maya’s waiting towel, she wiped her face and stood straight. “He forgot about it the next morning. I guess I should’ve asked him, but I didn’t want him to get mad again. He’s sick and he doesn’t need to worry about me being stupid.”
“How are you stupid?” Maya frowned, and dried the bowl.
Sarah pulled the third bowl into the water. “I should have stayed inside where it’s safe, not gone out where someone could’ve robbed me. I found this curtain in a room on the tenth a couple days later. I didn’t wanna bother him.”
Maya blinked at her. “You ran around naked for days?”
“No.” Sarah gave her a look as if she’d said the dumbest thing in the world. “Only one. Second day he told me to put on one of his army tees. I wasn’t allowed to leave the building with it.”
“We can’t spend our whole lives inside, worrying about who might hurt us. The Hab’s not that bad.” Maya set the bowl on the stack and waited for number three. “You’re doing it right. You don’t go out alone, and you got the Hornet now.”
“I guess. Most of the dosers stay in the Dead Space.”
Someone knocked on the door.
Maya spun to look out the archway at the living room. Sarah froze. Four seconds later, Maya made a ‘shh’ gesture at Sarah.
“Hello?” said a man. He knocked again. “Maintenance crew. We’re working on the building and need to check all the apartments for structural integrity.”
Maya thought about the men fixing the gaping hole in the wall on the ninth. That the building owner kept his word about repairing the place shocked her. She didn’t want to be rude, but Genna told her not to let anyone in. Better they think no one home.
“Hello?” More knocking.
“No one’s there,” said another man. “Fuck it, just go in.”
Shit! “Wait,” yelled Maya. She trotted into the living room. “Can you come back in like two hours?”
“Hey kid,” said the first man. “We just gotta look around at the walls. Be in and out in five minutes tops.”
She snarled under her breath. “Umm. I’m really sorry, but I’m not allowed to let anyone in.”
“What, you got left home alone?” asked the second man.
Crap. She cringed. “My mother’s right downstairs. She’ll be back soon. You should come back when she’s home.”
“We’re in a hurry, kid. Gotta survey the whole damn building.” The lock clicked open.
Maya gasped and took a few steps back as the front door swung inward, revealing a pair of men in white workers’ jumpsuits with yellow hard hats. The closer guy had a bit of grey hair poking out over his ears and his pale face sported a few days’ worth of beard stubble. The man behind him, more muscular but shorter with a buzz cut, pushed a cart into the apartment. Various tools and little handheld meters littered a bin on the top level, and a huge plastiboard box on the lower shelf bore a ‘CenCor Networks’ logo. A bit of wire stuck out of a hole at the top.
“You shouldn’t just walk in like that.” Sarah hurried over, putting herself in front of Maya.
The tall man stared around at the ceiling while walking deeper into the apartment. “You won’t even notice we’re here. Just gotta check for damage.”
Maya spun to keep staring at him as he passed, fuming at being ignored, but intimidated by his height.
His partner pushed the cart in a little further before grabbing a brick-sized black box from the top and calling, “Hal,” before tossing it.
Hal looked back in time to catch the device.
Maya twisted to glare at the shorter man for a second before taking a step after Hal. “You can’t just walk into someone’s home.”
“Sure we can.” Hal pushed a button on the box. “It’s in the lease contract. Landlord access for maintenance needs.”
“Gah!” yelled the other man.
Maya whirled around.
The worker had grabbed Sarah from behind, holding a white rag over her face. She’d gotten a healthy handful of his testicles and squeezed for all she had. Maya screamed as loud as she could and jumped at him, trying to pull his hairy arm away from her face.
Hal grabbed Maya, crushing a wet cloth over her mouth and nose. Tears sprang from her eyes at the fumes, and a burn like alcohol fire ran up her nostrils. She gagged and coughed, panic rising at her inability to breathe. Instinct took over; she stopped trying to pull the man off Sarah and clawed in a frenzy at the arm holding her, but he refused to let go. Sound melted into a murky morass, and her muscles stopped listening. Dingy green carpet met her cheek and faded to blackness.
16
Negotiation
Mouth dry and head pounding, Maya awoke flat on her back staring up at a clean ceiling of Washington blue. Dizziness lingered, and her effort to sit up manifested as a feeble side-to-side squirm. Softness beneath her suggested she lay upon a bed with her legs bent at the knee over the edge. A sour, chemical taste remained on her tongue, and her limbs felt heavier than they should be. Warmth beside her made her roll her head to the left.
Sarah, awake, lay close enough to touch shoulders, tears running down the sides of her head. Maya tried to sit up, but tight cords squeezed at her wrists and ankles. Her hands, bound behind her back, had gone numb from her weight pressing on them. She pushed herself up to sit and slouched forward, staring woozily down at her bare feet poking out from the floppy leggings of her fatigue pants. Despite the quiet murmuring of multiple strange men nearby while she found herself tied hand and foot in an unknown location, she grew angry at being stranded without shoes again.
“I am so
fucking tired of being kidnapped,” muttered Maya.
“Genna’s going to spank you for cursing,” said Sarah, sniffing. “She said no f-bombs ’til you’re eighteen.”
Maya lifted her head. The workers’ pushcart stood parked at the foot end of the bed. Beside it, the giant plastiboard box lay on its side, top open, with a fake length of wire attached to a plastic guide. Instead of network cable, it held a large quantity of nothing. Those men had to have stuffed them in the box and rolled them right out the front door―past Weber. She contemplated screaming, but these people didn’t bother taping her mouth shut, so they obviously didn’t care how much noise she made now.
A small table between the beds held a lamp, a non-video phone, and an alarm clock that displayed 7:18 p.m. Maya stifled a gasp. We’ve been unconscious all day… She swallowed hard, hoping they’d only lost one day. The oddity of waking up in the early evening made her feel disjointed from time, unable to tell what day of the week it was. Chloroform wouldn’t have knocked us out that long. Her heart raced in fear at the thought these men had likely injected her with some drug to keep her out cold. She twisted side to side, checking her arms for any sign of needle marks, but didn’t find anything obvious. Having no idea what they dosed her with gave her a case of the shivers that wouldn’t stop.
She winced, testing the binding at her wrists. The men had used rope, which pinched the more she squirmed. Sarah, aside from her soundless weeping, looked in control of her emotions. Her shoulders twitched side to side in an almost imperceptible continuous motion.
A fortyish man in a grey suit paced around the far side of the room beyond a second bed. One cheap-looking desk and an entertainment center sat against the wall to the right. From the lack of dirt and peeling paint, and the pleasant floral scent in the air, she figured they’d been brought into the Sanctuary Zone already and wound up at a hotel or something.
“What is taking Ruiz so damned long?” asked the man in the suit.
Hal, having traded his worker’s outfit for a dark turtleneck sweater and black fatigues similar to Maya’s, occupied a wingback chair near the window. He shrugged. “You didn’t hire me to be a psychic. Are you expecting an answer or just wasting oxygen?”
The other ‘workman’ emerged from the bathroom, chuckling.
Music with a strong Asian influence, rendered on wind chimes, emanated from Grey Suit. He took a minicomputer from his pocket, poked its screen, and held it up to his head. “Miss Shen… Apologies for the delay.”
A feminine voice murmured, indistinct.
“Of course. Yes.” He glanced at Maya. “Gut says yes, but Ruiz isn’t here yet with the PMRI.”
Shen? Maya squinted. Something sounded too familiar about that name. She leaned forward, turning her head to put an ear toward the man in the suit, straining to listen in.
“… going wrong … absolute certainty … as soon as you’re finished.”
“Of course. I’ll call you as soon as humanly possible,” said Grey Suit.
That woman’s voice made Maya think of a boardroom, but she couldn’t put a face or identity to her.
She bent forward, examining her feet. Black cord as thin as her fingers wound about her ankles, but her pants got in the way so she couldn’t get a good look at how they tied it. Maya grumbled as she squirmed her legs back and forth in protest of the rope. “You’re wasting your time.”
None of the men even looked at her.
Maya twisted left to check on Sarah. The girl continued to stare at the ceiling with a look of intense concentration. Sensing Maya watching, Sarah shifted her gaze to lock eyes with her and offered an apologetic lip bite.
“What?” whispered Maya.
Sarah looked at the ceiling again and resumed squirming.
“What?” whispered Maya, louder. When Sarah didn’t react, she faced the room. “What do you want? Who are you?”
Hal’s minicomputer emitted plink noises like glass crystals tapping together. His face flashed with a rainbow of colors. A moment later, the device said, “Level four,” in an inhuman, deep voice.
Grey Suit continued pacing. His expression said he wanted to be here almost as much as Maya did.
“Argh!” Maya struggled at the ropes, rocking side to side and swinging her legs up and down. “Stop ignoring me!” She scowled. “My mother is going to rip your balls off.”
The short ‘worker’ chuckled. “Good luck with that. Hal’s ol’ lady has ’em in a jar.”
“Your little sister would say otherwise, Mike,” said Hal in a conversational tone, still tapping gems on his screen. “And that precious little redhead over there already tried.”
Grey Suit stifled a chuckle while Mike scowled.
Sarah’s concentration lapsed long enough to show a hint of a smile. Maya shot her an intense look, trying to get her attention and at least an answer. A gap in her curtain-dress where two safety pins struggled to keep it from unraveling exposed a strip of her pale, white stomach, rising and falling with her hard breathing. The girl looked beyond terrified, but she kept her attention on the ceiling, as if refusing to look at any of the men might make her situation not real. Maya twisted and pulled at her arms, hating her tiny wrists that Vanessa probably ordered like a pizza topping. The email said Vanessa had chosen her eye shape from Japanese DNA, her sylph’s build from the Sudan, and her complexion a mixture of several ethnicities. Only thirty-something percent of her genes came from her biological mother. Vanessa’s more my cousin than my mother.
Headlights washed over the front window as a car came to a stop with a faint squeak.
“It’s about damned time,” said Grey Suit.
Mike opened the door, admitting a dark-skinned man with a dense helmet of black hair and a thick mustache. He entered carrying a silver metal briefcase with a red cross on both sides over the unoccupied bed, where he set the case flat.
“Sorry about that, Mr. Winnow.” The man Maya assumed to be Ruiz flipped open the latches on the case. “Got stuck behind a goddamn emergency cordon. Some asshat threw a Molotov at an Ascendant clinic.”
Maya leaned back, fighting the ropes, as Ruiz pulled a device from the case that resembled a giant ray gun. “What do you want? Why did you kidnap us?”
“Make sure it’s her,” said Winnow.
Ruiz walked up to Maya and pointed the thing at her. His face lit up from a small screen on the back end. He fiddled with buttons for a few seconds before lowering his arm. “Yeah. It’s her. Or at least it’s a live kid. No android.”
“You’re wasting your time,” said Maya. “Vanessa doesn’t care about me at all. You won’t get any money out of her.”
“We’re not here for a ransom.” Winnow walked up to stand beside Ruiz, his shimmery suit swooshing with his motion.
Sarah froze. What little color she had disappeared. “Please don’t make us do sex.”
Hal grimaced. “Relax kid. That’s not happening.”
“What?” Maya stared at him, still fidgeting at the rope. “Why did you take us then? What are you going to do?”
Mr. Winnow gave her a blasé look. “We had to be sure you weren’t an android. I’m rather allergic to nuclear radiation.”
“You know the decoys don’t have nukes, right? Vanessa’s far too cheap for that. Plus she doesn’t trust electronics in case one shorted out and went off.” She gasped as her continued effort to escape caused the rope to pinch her. “Ow. Dammit. Untie me right now!”
“Still bossy I see.” Mr. Winnow removed a small black case from his suit jacket pocket. “This is not about a ransom. You are in Vanessa Oman’s will to inherit the company should anything… unfortunate happen to her.”
Maya shook her head. “I don’t even want the company. All I want is for them to stop using Fade on innocent people.”
“You really believe that about Fade, don’t you?” Mr. Winnow unzipped the case and removed a syringe.
“What is that for?” Maya leaned back. “And yes. I believe Vanessa has released Fade
to make money. Those files are true.”
“Guns are so messy.” He examined the syringe in the light. “This won’t leave any blood to clean up.”
Maya almost wet herself at the realization the man intended to kill Sarah if she didn’t cooperate. She pulled as hard as she could, but the rope binding her arms refused to break. Sarah grunted and squirmed with renewed effort.
“No! Please don’t!” said Maya, adding a trace of whine. “You don’t know Vanessa. She disowned me after I made that video. I’m no one to her now. I got kidnapped once before and she told them to go ahead and kill me—with me watching. I’m out of her will. I’m not even a Citizen anymore.”
“Tragic, really.” Mr. Winnow frowned. “And yet she has not removed you from the will.”
Maya growled. “In case you idiots hadn’t noticed, I walked away from Ascendant. I’m living out in the Hab with the Nons because I don’t want Ascendant. I hate Vanessa. You don’t have to threaten Sarah to make me sign it over. You can have the stupid company. I don’t want anything to do with it.”
Mr. Winnow raised an eyebrow. He cocked his jaw to the side, measuring her with a stare.
Her heart thudded in her chest; she couldn’t stop shaking. That he hesitated at all gave her hope. The man clearly hadn’t expected that. “I’m nine years old. Even if Vanessa died today, I wouldn’t really have control of anything for another nine years. A trustee would manage it. I’ll sign it over. I only want one thing.”
Mr. Winnow looked her up and down as she wriggled. “You’re hardly in any position to negotiate, Maya.”
“The only thing I want is for Ascendant to stop releasing Fade. Think about it. If the company stops covering for Vanessa and blames her for the Fade, then stops using it, the Brigade won’t have any motivation to cause problems. Public opinion of the company will bounce back as Vanessa takes all the fallout.”
Mr. Winnow patted her on the head. “That’s quite clever, and not at all a bad idea. You’re only forgetting two small things.”
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