Sarah gasped. “Remember that whole part about best friends don’t let each other do dumb stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s dumb.”
Maya leaned her weight back on her hands. “Maybe. But putting a bullet in her stupid face will make me feel better.”
“I don’t think you can kill anyone.” Sarah put an arm around Maya’s shoulders. “You’re too sweet.”
“Am not.”
Sarah grinned. “And you can’t stand looking at people getting shot.”
Mr. Nori shooting the punk leapt into her mind. She cringed. “Okay, so I won’t shoot her.” Tears started again. “But she killed my mom.”
In her friend’s comforting embrace, Maya surrendered to grief, unable to do anything but cry.
18
Orphans
Cold concrete, dank dripping, and time chipped away at Maya’s simmering anger. The men who’d attacked them at Sarah’s apartment had probably intended on killing her too, or taking her to be scanned and shooting her after they scanned her to make sure they hadn’t grabbed a decoy android.
A momentary flash of the man with the needle leapt across her memory, startling a shiver out of her. Eyes clamped shut, she grabbed her neck where he’d almost stuck her. She couldn’t dredge up an explanation for how she’d stayed so calm when Genna and the others abducted her from the penthouse she’d spent most of her life in. Perhaps believing that Vanessa would bring the power of Ascendant and the Authority to save her and she only had to buy enough time to be found had given her courage at first.
Courage that shattered with four words―I’ll make another one.
At first, she’d picked up on Genna’s heartache at losing her son and tried to leverage that for pity, but the instant she’d seen Maya’s reaction to being thrown away, Genna had gone from kidnapper to mother and almost gotten herself killed protecting Maya from Moth. She had gotten herself killed trying to rescue her from these people, some internal coup going on at Ascendant. A coup she’d probably started with her video, or at least emboldened. Maya wrapped her arms around her legs, hiding her face against her knees.
With the adrenaline of abduction, gunfire, and running fading, the reality of what had happened crept over her shoulders like a leaden blanket. Genna, her mother, died twenty feet away trying to save her.
Maya sobbed.
Sarah rubbed her back.
She tried to distract herself by analyzing why the two fake workers hadn’t just shot her in the apartment. Maybe they feared getting caught or truly believed those decoys carried nukes. Maybe neither man had the stomach to kill a little girl. Why did they have to scan her? If they were worried about an android, they should’ve known they got a real kid when chloroform worked on her.
Oh, those androids would’ve faked it. They’re designed to be kidnapped.
All she had wanted while trapped on the bed in that little motel room was for Genna to kick in the door and save her. Sorrow twisted her thoughts; the idea that her mother had shown up there only because Maya wanted her to brought crushing guilt, as though she’d caused her death.
“It’s okay. I cried a lot about my dad too.” Sarah kept squeezing her.
Eventually, Maya ran out of tears and stared, blank-faced, at the water. “What should we do?”
“I dunno. I guess we’re both orphans now.” She picked up a tiny rock and threw it into the shadows. “Book or Zoe might let us stay with them.”
Maya stared down her legs at her toes, mostly hidden in the silt. “You don’t know your dad’s dead. He’s in the hospital.”
Sarah grasped Maya’s face in both hands, pulled her head up, and touched foreheads, staring eye-to-eye. “You don’t know Genna is either.”
“I saw her get shot!” screamed Maya. “She dropped her gun. Soldiers don’t drop their guns unless they’re dead.”
Her voice echoed into the distant sewer tunnels. A flurry of scratching in the dark followed.
Maya slapped herself in the chest. “Right here, and she collapsed.” She wanted to sob again, but couldn’t find the energy.
“They kept saying we couldn’t go to the Sanc to visit him.” Sarah swallowed hard, fighting back tears. “Every time we asked, they made up an excuse like they knew he died and didn’t want me to find out. You know. Stalling. What do you think?”
“Thanks for making me try to feel better.”
Sarah threw her arm around Maya and pulled her close. “We could try begging in the Sanc. Maybe I could get some tools an’ we could sneak into nice fancy apartments when people are at work and eat their food.”
“You’re gonna miss everyone. You should go back home. These people are after me.”
“I’m not leaving you alone here.” Sarah’s words sounded far more determined than her quivering voice. “If we go back home, we go together. At least if we beg in the Sanc, we don’t gotta worry about dosers tryin’ to steal our clothes for a fix.”
“There’s dosers here too.” Maya folded her arms atop her knees and bowed her head on top of them. With Genna gone, she didn’t much care to move from this spot ever again.
“Yeah, but here, there’s a lot better stuff they can steal than clothes from street kids. Kick in a window and take electronics or something. They don’t need ta bother us.”
Maya sniffled. “We’re gonna grow up to be prostitutes, aren’t we? If we grow up.”
“No way. You’re too smart for that. You like went to school and stuff.”
“Smart’s got nothing to do with it. We have nowhere to go and no one to…” Maya broke down crying again.
“Don’t be stupid.” Sarah jostled her. “Remember that man at the food place? People know you. They’ll help us.”
Harlowe. Maya sat up straight and wiped her face. Her voice still shaky from crying, she half whispered, “We could go to The Hangar. There’s Brigade there. Maybe they’ll help.”
Sarah quirked an eyebrow. “They won’t let a couple of kids walk in there. That’s a bar.”
“I’ve been there before. If they recognize me, they’ll let me in. Harlowe will let us stay there. Maybe we could be like mascots or something. Can we try that before wandering the streets alone?” She looked up at the black ceiling, lined with hanging strands of unidentifiable gunk that resembled seaweed. “Do you think it’s safe to go outside yet?”
“It’s never safe.” Sarah pulled her feet in close and stood. “But whoever those people were, they’ve probably given up by now.”
“Ascendant security.” Maya got up and brushed dirt from her pants.
Sarah glanced back and forth from the ladder behind them to a grating that formed a walkway over three concrete islands, leading to another tunnel on the far side of the cistern. “What’s Ascendant after you for? I thought Vanessa didn’t want you.”
“Umm.” Maya tried to think past the cobwebs of loss. “I guess maybe Vanessa knows there’s people inside trying to get rid of her. Maybe she wants me for… I dunno.”
“Come on. Let’s go out a different way in case they’re watching the street where they lost us.” Sarah took her hand and went for the metal walkway.
Maya tiptoed over the muddy concrete and climbed up after her. The textured grating felt like stepping on a whole bunch of forks pointing upward. “Ow!” She jumped back.
“You could swim?”
The brackish water didn’t look any more welcoming than the path of pain. “I dunno how to swim. How deep is it?”
Sarah shrugged. “How should I know?”
Maya whimpered.
“Hey, get on my back.”
“You don’t have shoes either,” said Maya.
“Yeah, but I’m used to being outside. You had nice soft rugs.” She grinned.
“I can do it.” Maya grabbed Sarah’s shoulders and eased herself up on the walkway. She hissed and cringed. “Ooh. Ow.”
Inch by painful inch, she followed her friend some twenty feet to the other end. After jumping to more dust
y concrete, she picked up one foot then the other, checking her soles for cuts. The idea of being shoeless in a sewer scared her plenty enough without an open wound. Fortunately, the grating hadn’t been sharp―only pointy.
Narrow pathways flanked a deeper channel in the passage ahead, the concrete an inch or so under the surface. Murk concealed the depth of the middle, though it felt deep. Sarah stepped onto the walkway, into water up to her ankles.
She shivered and scrunched up her shoulders. “It’s cold!”
Maya hiked up her pant legs to keep them dry and followed into the frigid water. After the grating, the cold felt good. Slimy moss squished between her toes, occasionally thin enough for the coarse texture of concrete to reach her feet. With two fistfuls of fabric at her thighs, she walked slow, careful not to splash.
Something glided along in the center channel. Maya tracked a vee in the surface as it went by, ahead of a dark, oblong shape. “Eww!” She shivered. “There’s a turd!”
If by sheer force of will she could’ve hovered above the water (and stopped touching it), she would have.
Sarah glanced back over her shoulder. “I don’t see anything.”
“Go, go!” Maya bumped into her from behind.
“This isn’t a sewer. It’s a storm drain. Shouldn’t be poo down here. Doesn’t smell like poo, does it?”
Maya sniffed. Mildew, wetness, dirt. “No.”
A few minutes later, they arrived at a rounded hollow in the wall containing a gunk-encrusted metal ladder. Where it met the curve of the ceiling, it entered a tunnel for about six feet to a small chamber that appeared to have daylight in it. Sarah grasped the rungs and pulled herself up. Maya shivered, standing in the icy water, watching her friend climb.
Motion at the right caught her eye, and she focused on another ‘turd’ gliding along in the current. She stared at it, horrified—and the suspicious object lifted its head to peer back at her. Dark fur. Little pink ears. Beady black eyes.
Not a turd.
Rat.
Maya screamed.
Something tickled her left calf.
She whirled around and gawked at a swarm of rats gathering on the walkway, nosing at her.
Again, she screamed, and jumped on the ladder, no longer caring if the bottoms of her pant legs got wet. Maya scrambled about halfway up the distance from floor to tunnel ceiling when one of the aged bricks in the wall behind the ladder shifted and fell away. A rat stuck its head out, a set of twitching whiskers and a little pink nose close enough for her to kiss. With a shriek, Maya jumped back—and fell into the water.
Panic took her as she went under. Tiny claws seemed to scratch at her from everywhere. Little furry bodies bumped her arms, climbed onto her head, and tried to wriggle under her shirt. Awful water invaded her mouth and nose; she gagged, flailing and kicking. Every time she attempted to scream again, she gulped down a mouthful of horribleness.
A loud splash came from nearby. Something touched her arm; she flailed, trying to get away until she recognized squeezing fingers. Sarah pulled Maya’s head up out of the water and held her by the arms.
“Put your feet down! It’s not deep!”
Gagging and choking, Maya scrambled to get her legs under her. The murky central channel turned out to be only a few feet deep, coming up to her armpits when she stood. Her feet squishing into a dense layer that felt like snot broke down the last shred of composure keeping her from throwing up.
Sarah held her as she retched up the brackish dirt-tasting water she’d gulped down. When the heaving stopped, she pulled her to the edge. Rats continued to swarm around, climbing them, sitting on their shoulders, and sniffing at the air. Overwhelmed, Maya clung to Sarah and wept.
“Get ’em off me!”
“They’re just curious. They want to get out of the water just like us.”
“They’re gonna bite me and I’m gonna get sick!”
Sarah pushed her up out of the water, a hand on each butt cheek.
Maya shrieked, racing up the ladder. As soon as she climbed onto solid, dry ground in a cube-shaped chamber, she jumped up and down, swatting at herself in a frenetic, whirling dance. Plastic cups and burger cartons crunched and rustled. Sarah’s head popped up from a hole in the floor.
“There’s no rats on you. Stop.”
Maya froze, arms held up like the sprained wings of a chicken. She examined herself as Sarah crawled from the ladder tunnel and got to her feet. Satisfied at not having any passengers, she relaxed and looked around, but couldn’t stop shivering.
They’d found another storm drain, a small concrete-walled chamber with a wide opening near the ceiling and a round cover at the top of a short ladder made of iron rods embedded in the wall. Strong daylight leaked in from the street-facing hole, making her squint.
Soaked, the material of Sarah’s curtain-dress had turned almost transparent. The waterlogged fabric hung heavy, stretching the spaces between wraps and exposing more safety pins. Fortunately, they’d collected enough dirt from this room to disguise how pitiful a garment it was. Plastic shifting underfoot, Sarah crossed to the ladder and climbed up to the cover. She grunted while pushing at it but gave up with a gasp a moment later.
“It’s either locked, something’s on top of it, or I’m not strong enough to move it.”
Maya shivered. Her once-baggy fatigue pants clung to her legs like a sausage skin, heavy and sopping. She did not want to think about what sorts of germs or foulness might be in the water that had gotten everywhere, even drenching her hair to the roots. “What about the hole?”
“Maybe if I stand on your shoulders, I can reach it, then you can climb me.”
“I don’t think that’ll work.”
Sarah shrugged. “We could use your pants for a rope. My dress will fall apart.”
Maya blushed. “I’d have to take them off.” She shrank in on herself. “Not outside.”
“Hmm.” Sarah looked around at the debris before staring at the drain opening. “We only have to go up a little bit.”
“Boost me and I’ll see if there’s something on the cover.”
“’Kay.”
Sarah squatted by the wall, bracing her hands against the concrete. Maya gingerly climbed up to stand on her shoulders, also holding onto the wall for balance. When Sarah stood to her full height, the lower edge of the drain came within reach―by an inch.
Maya gripped the rough concrete and struggled to pull herself up, groaning from the effort.
Sarah grabbed her feet and pushed. “Wow, you can’t do a pull-up?”
“Lazy rich girl, remember?” Maya got one arm out onto a paved strip and grunted. “And yes, I can do a pull-up, but my arms are tired.”
Sarah shoved her upward, propelling her hip-deep in the hole.
She found herself sprawled on the ground at the side of a road that contained more people than cars. Beneath a dark sky, swaths of blue and red neon glowed from the wet blacktop, reflecting the signs on various storefronts, bright enough to make her squint. A moment of looking around made it seem less like a road and more like a wide thoroughfare between two rows of stores. The distant hiss of moving cars came from the right, and headlight glare danced on buildings at the end of the concourse some fifty yards away.
Relieved that she hadn’t crawled headfirst into traffic, Maya grabbed the steel shroud around the drain on either side of her waist and pushed herself up and out. Once on her feet, she turned to examine the hatch cover and frowned at a huge blue dumpster parked on top of it. Someone had spray painted ‘Burn Ascendant’ across the front. Maya walked over and tried to push the dumpster aside but couldn’t get it to budge.
“Maya?” yelled Sarah.
She scurried back to the drain and crouched by the opening. “I’m here. There’s a dumpster sitting on the lid.”
“Ohh.”
Maya looked around at the crowd, at all the people in all their nice clothes, walking back and forth while shopping, out on the town, or maybe heading home in a hu
rry. A time display on one of the stores said 10:08 p.m. Maya scanned the crowd, hunting for someone who looked like they might help Sarah, but everyone she made eye contact with hurried away with a grimace as if looking at her had made them dirty. One woman hiding under a transparent umbrella scowled, likely assuming Maya intended to root around the trash box.
A sharp blast of compressed air went off behind her, making her jump.
She spun, hand over her heart from the surprise of such a loud noise happening so close. Twenty or so feet away in an alley, a man with floppy rubber boots in a drab grey poncho, absent a filter mask, stood by an open metal door. A logo resembling a basket of food on his apron matched the stencil on the door. Fog and mist rolled out into the street behind him from a room that had to be freezing inside. She squatted by the drain opening as if she could hide behind the curb.
The man wheeled a white box out on a hand truck and headed toward the dumpster. A stink like fish surrounded him, leaving Maya confused between hungry or wanting to throw up again. He flipped open the plastic lid and upended the box, dumping reddish liquid and fish parts into the dumpster that kept Sarah trapped.
Maya jumped upright. “Excuse me, sir?”
He glanced at her. “Ain’t got no loose change, kid.”
“I’m not going to ask you for money. Can you help me please? My friend fell in the drain and she can’t get out.”
His standoffish air lessened. “Oi what?” After setting the empty box back on the hand truck, two steps put him right in front of her. “You sayin’ you got a friend stuck? This ain’t some kind of trick, is it? What’re ya up to?”
“No, sir.” Maya squatted and looked through the opening down at Sarah. “Say something.”
“Help!” yelled Sarah.
“Oh, shit,” muttered the man. He hurried around and took a knee next to Maya, peering into the gap. “Damn. Uhh… Really is a kid down there.”
“Can you move the dumpster? It’s blocking the cover.” Maya pointed.
“Oh. Yeah. That’d work.”
He ambled back to the dumpster and leaned into it. A bit of grunting and shoving later, its wheels gave way and the ponderous trash box rolled clear of the metal disc. Somewhat winded, the man took a few breaths before crouching and lifting the cover. Sarah had been waiting on the ladder right below and darted out into the fresh air as soon as she could.
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