by Alex Ziebart
Lacking any directions, Kristen simply moved forward down a row of cars. Between piles of automotive bones, she saw small buildings dotting the scrapyard. Some of them looked like barns, and others were simple squares: warehouses or garages. They’d be in one of those, she guessed.
She set her sights on the nearest structure, one of the warehouses, and picked her way toward it. There didn’t appear to be any direct route, instead she walked a circuitous path, sometimes following the roads created by walls of cars, other times squeezing between them as a shortcut. As she went, the sound of little claws scraping on metal set her nerves on edge. Probably raccoons, but she couldn’t shake the creeps. Worse, the raccoons might not be real raccoons. Puddles and narrow streams inspired a game of “blood or gasoline,” and she was only mostly sure it was gasoline each and every time.
Kristen hopped into the bed of a rusty pickup truck that stood between her and the warehouse, then hopped back out the other side. She approached the building, eyeing the oil-stained bricks and red garage doors. What now? she wondered. Do I knock or what?
She raised a hand to knock, but stopped before her fist hit the door.
Kristen dug her fingers under the garage door and heaved. The door flew up on its tracks in a racket. Inside, she found nothing but partially assembled—or disassembled—cars. No changelings. No Emma. Nothing of value.
“This way, Maiden.”
Kristen whirled to find the source of the voice. Behind her, a woman stood on top of an old, wrecked pickup, features washed to a silhouette by the floodlight. Kristen couldn’t place her thick accent; maybe Middle Eastern? The woman put a hand on her hip. “At first, Maiden, you impressed me. Then, you disappointed me. Now, you disappoint me more, standing there like a fool. If you hope to live another day in this new world, work on your skills of observation.”
“Oh, thank god. I was getting worried the bad guys didn’t actually monologue.” Kristen feigned wiping sweat from her brow.
“Cute.” The woman said it in a way that made clear she did not, in fact, find it cute. “I will show you your sister so you know she’s safe, and then we’ll talk.”
Her silhouette abruptly collapsed into a fluffy white cat. Kristen cursed. Of course. She tried to recall whether she’d seen a litter box or cat dish or anything like that in Todd’s house, but she was pretty sure she hadn’t. The cat jumped off the far side of the truck and Kristen rushed to follow, bounding clear over the pickup.
The cat made a point of taking the most obfuscated path to their destination, often using her diminutive size to her advantage. She slipped under and through scrapped cars, disappearing into one gap, and reappearing somewhere altogether different. Kristen struggled to keep pace—not for lack of breath, but lack of cat’s grace. The cat bounded onto a pile of old tires, dove down the top, and came out the bottom of the other side, as if navigating a playground castle. Kristen lost her entirely more than once, scrambling to keep up, but the cat always reappeared as a silhouette in the light.
They came to another warehouse, its garage door left open mere inches at the bottom. The cat squeezed beneath it. Kristen approached, ready to tear the door off its tracks. It began rolling open before she could, the lights within blooming to life with an audible clap of power. Suddenly anxious, Kristen shuffled back. What was waiting on the other side? A firing squad? A bazooka?
The door rose above eye height and Kristen quickly counted ten men and women in black riot gear, but no cat, and no woman who had been the cat. All but one stood in wary defensive positions behind hollowed out cars, rolling metal tool benches, and machinery. The last stood behind Emma—bound, gagged, and unconscious in a steel folding chair—with a gun pressed to the back of her head. Kristen put her hands up slowly and took a few cautious steps forward. She knew her hands were shaking, but she couldn’t stop them. “Put the gun away. I can guess what all of this is about, and I’m going to cooperate. Please.”
A woman—the woman Kristen had previously seen in shadow—circled into view. A black flowing robe hung from her body. Her skin was a dark, earthy brown, eyes the color of amber. The woman's hair was done up in thick braids pulled back into a ponytail the width of a man's arm. “I'd ask you to lay down your weapons first, but we both know you can't do that.”
“I won't come any closer. How's that? I'll stay right here. Just take the gun away from her.”
The woman sauntered forward. “Emma's situation is nonnegotiable at this time. You terrify us, Kristen Anderson. I admit that freely. It has been a long time since we've felt fear, but the first step to overcoming fear is understanding. I’m beginning to understand.”
Kristen’s spine stiffened at nonnegotiable. “That's a long-winded way of saying you kidnapped my sister. What do you want?”
The woman threw her head back and laughed, rich and loud. “Oh, I thought you wanted a monologue. I was trying to indulge you.”
I need to stop trying to be snarky. These assholes ruin everything.
Kristen ran her tongue across her lips in an attempt to wet a suddenly dry mouth. “You want the ring. Right? I don’t have it, and I don’t know where it is. If I could hand it over right now, I would.”
The woman stopped within arm’s length. If she was truly afraid, she didn’t show it. Those behind her, however, shifted uneasily. Even the one with the gun on Emma’s head seemed twitchy. “I am Nenet, Princess of Mu. Now your Templars can stop trying to figure out who I am and focus on finding Delphi so you can bring me what I want.”
Kristen slowly lowered her hands to her side. “Princess? That’s a joke, right?”
Nenet scowled, thin eyebrows nearly forming a point in the middle. “I’m not joking.”
A princess of a mythical continent kidnapped my sister and wants to trade her for a magic ring. And I’m working with the Knights Templar. What the fuck. Kristen took a breath. Chill. Get your head on right. This isn’t the time.
“I’m sorry.” Kristen tried to sound sincere. “I haven’t been doing this very long. It’s all still a surprise. If you know Delphi has the ring, why don’t you get it yourself?”
Nenet crossed her arms and cocked a hip. “We’ve tried, as you should know. You’re the one who got in our way when we tried to seize Todd Schumacher.”
Yeah, I did. Got his family back from you, too.
Kristen’s gaze drifted back to Emma. She didn’t look hurt, as far as Kristen could tell. Despite the circumstances, she appeared to be sleeping peacefully. If only getting her back would be as easy as it had been with Todd’s family. Kristen focused her gaze on Nenet. “So you don’t know where Delphi is, either. That’s why you needed Todd? To find her?”
“Oh, I know where she is. Delphi attracts gifted not unlike those lights out there attract insects. She is a lion in sheep's clothing. I won't give her the satisfaction of killing any more of my people. I’ve also lost interest in crossing paths with the Templars. You’ll deal with Delphi for me, and since you are a Templar yourself, you can deal with them, too. Then you bring me the ring, or your sister will die.”
“Deal with the Templars? I’m not going to kill them.”
“Then don’t. Keep them in the dark. You’re their agent. They’ll assume you can handle the situation. By the time they discover otherwise, the ring will be on my finger, and we’ll have left this wretched place.”
Kristen looked askance. Less than a week with Temple, and this happens. She wanted to scream, hit something, or throw something, but she held herself back. She didn’t trust the gunman’s trigger discipline. “Why? What are you going to do with it? Delphi wants to make a new world or some…bullshit. I can’t imagine you want anything better.”
Nenet broke into a toothy grin. “We’re just a forgotten people trying to reclaim our cultural heritage. It’s our ring crafted by our people. It belongs with us.”
“Yeah, like I’m going to believe that.”
“Of course not. We want it because individuals like Delphi are figuring out what
they are. This world is littered with our creations. It’s only a matter of time before they use them.”
“That ring was supposedly in the ground for thousands of years. You just left these things laying around?”
Nenet pulled her robe tighter around her body. “I see this is going to be a long conversation. Come with me, and sit. Make any move toward your sister and she will die.”
She turned on her heel and strode into the garage. Kristen followed. Her gaze hung on Emma, but she maintained a wide berth to avoid tempting fate. She could sense almost every gun in the room trained on her movement. Nenet took her to a small table—maybe a poker table once, but too filthy now to see the green—and sat in a steel chair, motioning Kristen to the other. Both seated, Nenet began again. “It’s the nature of your people to gravitate toward murdering one another. You always find a reason. When it’s not scarcity, it’s race. Religion. Creed. Always murder. Always destruction.”
“Your people rolled into my city with military hardware, robbed a museum, took a bunch of people hostage, kidnapped families…”
“Indeed.” Nenet cracked a smile. “Such is dealing with humanity. We could hardly ask nicely. Now, don’t interrupt me. A very long time ago, my people decided we didn’t have any interest in genocide. Our queen attempted to instill peace and order. She commanded our artisans to create artifacts of power and distribute them to the wise men of humanity. Her goal was to make war so costly for humanity that they would never again partake.”
“Mutually assured destruction?”
“Precisely.”
“Your queen thought it was a good idea to give everyone nukes? Was she an idiot?”
Nenet chuckled. “I suspect so. War continued. The ringbearers were chosen too well. They understood the power bestowed upon them and feared its use. The slaughter of their kin wasn’t enough to motivate them. They preferred letting their own people die to wholesale destruction. Eventually, the rings were lost. We’ve wanted to reclaim them for a very long time, but the world is a big place, and rings are small things.”
“So you just want these rings back so you can lock them up and keep them safe?”
“Certainly. If we don’t, individuals like Delphi will use them to destroy the world. These items have that capability. If this world contained humanity alone, we wouldn’t involve ourselves. Unfortunately, we live here, too. We would like our world intact. I’m merely correcting past mistakes.”
Kristen found herself looking at Emma again. Emma was wearing the pajamas she’d had on the last time Kristen saw her, which suggested they’d had her awhile. “If you can make such powerful artifacts, why aren’t you all wearing some badass jewelry? I shouldn’t be able to kick your asses like I did.”
Nenet formed a thin smile and offered no answer. Kristen looked at her, trying to understand the meaning behind the expression. From what Jane had explained days before, the Sea People had been raiding for thousands of years. If they had had ridiculously powerful artifacts, why bother?
It was possible, Kristen supposed, the rings didn’t belong to the people of Mu at all. Or if they did, that their magic couldn’t be reproduced. There had to be a reason they were sneaking around the world, trying to reclaim old relics.
Something Nenet said echoed in Kristen’s mind: I’m merely correcting past mistakes. What was the mistake? Distributing the rings or trying for peace rather than genocide? The changelings had openly attacked, killed, or kidnapped people already. Such is dealing with humanity.
Nenet wanted them all dead.
But she had Emma.
Kristen crossed her arms and tried to look pensive—the right kind of pensive, anyway. She knit her brow, looked at the floor, and pursed her lips, trying her damnedest to look torn by a moral dilemma instead of trying to formulate a plan. Nenet seemed to buy it. “Take your time.”
The gifted had clearly thrown a wrench in the changelings’ plans. Even after observing Todd’s abilities, they’d constructed a poor plan to kidnap his family. His wife and kids were being held behind a brick wall. To get them back, all he’d have had to do was grab a weapon from his basement, blink through that wall, and mop up. The changelings didn’t know how to deal with it. Nenet’s fear was genuine.
How best to use that, though? If she could get Todd’s help, Todd could grab Emma, but…
Was that even Emma?
Don’t look at her. Kristen told herself. If you look at her, Nenet will notice. Do not look. Time’s up. Get out.
“I don’t see any other options. I’ll get you your ring.”
“Excellent.” Nenet purred, “You have fifteen hours.”
“Fifteen?” Kristen's voice shrilled with outrage. “You said twenty-four. I agreed to twenty-four, not fifteen.”
Nenet crossed one leg over the other and folded her hands over one knee. “The way I see it, you've agreed to do whatever I ask. You don't have any other option. Fifteen hours, Kristen.”
Kristen gripped the table's edge and felt the urge to throw it. She squeezed instead and the particle board crumbled to splinters in her fingers. “Fine. Fifteen.”
“Good. Now run along and find my ring.”
After a momentary baleful stare, Kristen walked away from the table and out of the garage. She stopped just outside and turned back, looking at Emma's unconscious form, then at each of the gunmen. She cursed and kicked the dirt hard enough to dig a trench. She feigned fury, stomping away from the garage and vaulting over cars—and shoving them aside—to avoid navigating the labyrinth of metal a second time.
Back in the Sam’s Salvage lobby, she dropped the façade. She had no doubt Nenet would send someone to follow her, but in that room with the blinds drawn, she could be confident there were no eyes but her own. She forced her mind to work, silently repeating an earlier question: What’s the play?
She needed something to give her an edge: maybe a tool, maybe information. Away from the spotlights, her sight adjusted to the darkness, the buzz of the Coke machine the only source of light. She moved through the lobby and slipped behind the long desk. She touched nothing and let her gaze roam. Knowing she didn’t have long before raising suspicions, she took rapid inventory of the few things that might prove useful. Rolodex. Tablet. Keys. Black book.
She searched for security cameras, but didn’t find any. A power cord caught her attention. It ran from a wall outlet to the base of a vintage gas pump in the corner—the sort of gas pump antiquers would die to get their hands on. There was a hand pump attached to the base, and Kristen had wasted enough time watching Pawn Stars and Antiques Roadshow to recognize the model predated electrical pumps. Why the power cord, then?
Curiosity piqued, Kristen examined the pump. The front bore a branded plate held in place by four big rivets painted glossy black.
No.
There were only three rivets. The fourth was flat—the lens of a camera. Kristen slipped behind the pump, wrapped her hands around it, and heaved it off of the ground. Sidestepping once, she looked at the floor where it had been. There were no other cords, only the power cable. She put the pump back and set to puzzling it out.
The camera hadn’t been set high—no overhead view—but high enough on the pump where it would see the faces of everyone in the lobby as well as everyone who came through the front door. There was a power cable, but no audio or visual cables; it had to be Wi-Fi. She wished she could get at the camera itself to check branding, but there wasn’t time.
Kristen grabbed the tablet from the desk and tucked it into the back of her shirt, the elastic of her shorts holding it in place. She shoved the little black book in her top. The keys would be the least useful thing, she concluded, and the Rolodex could only mean involving other people—people who might end up killed for it, or worse, getting Emma killed. She took a pair of loose quarters off of the desk, too. Shoving them in the Coke machine, she punched the Diet Coke button. Gotta have an alibi, right?
Sold out.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
&nb
sp; She punched buttons until one worked. A can tumbled into the dispenser with a clatter. Kristen grabbed it, checked the flavor, and scurried out the front door. She grumbled aloud while crossing the street to her car. “Jesus, you’d think a business could at least stock their soda machine. After all of this bullshit, you’d think karma would be kind enough to let me have a Diet Coke, but no.”
Kristen threw open her car door and hopped inside, slamming the door after her.
Think they bought it? Probably not. Kinda corny, Kris.
At first, she drove without destination. Thoughts buzzed in her head. Where would she be safe to talk? To follow up on her lead? To sit and think? She had to assume they could follow her car unseen—they’d clearly done it before. They might even have the car bugged. She considered going to the bank and sneaking in. They couldn’t reach her there, but it would raise suspicions for that very reason. She needed privacy, if only for a few minutes. Kristen could think of only one thing. Men feared it. Women respected it. Those two simple truths transcended cultures.
Kristen extracted a tampon from her purse and set it on the dashboard. She turned her car back toward civilization and the nearest gas station.
She pulled into the Gas'n'Go, parking her car in view of the clearly marked security camera. Purse slung over her shoulder and tampon clutched in hand, she hopped out and rushed through the station’s front doors, feigning distress. She paid no mind to anyone else inside and went straight for the front counter where a heavyset man sat on a stool behind thick bulletproof glass, his eyes glued to his phone. “Excuse me,” Kristen called through the glass, “can I use your bathroom?”
Without taking his eyes from the phone, the man jabbed a finger up at a handwritten sign taped to the glass that read: Bathroom for paying customers only. “You have to buy something first.”
“I’ll buy something, but I really need the bathroom first. I really, really need it.”