by Cate Morgan
Declan gave the man’s collar a pointed look. “Aren’t you supposed to discourage people going into pubs?”
A wise chuckle. “Far be it from me to deny anyone in this day and age a decent hot meal.”
“Thank you.”
The Tree and Flame wasn’t what he expected. Its long tables and benches were crowded with patrons, though where these people had obtained the money he couldn’t guess. They had no access to the electronic currency that replaced the now defunct paper and coin during the war, had no or non-working birth chips embedded beneath their skin. The dregs of society, hence the name.
An old man sat on a stool behind the bar knitting while a bartender hauled a stew pot of potatoes from the kitchen and dumped them with a muted rumble into a bin. It took him a moment, as she scraped the peel from a poor defenseless tuber as though it had done her personal injury, to recognize her.
Dark hair—auburn, he could see now in the fiery light of the hearth—in stark contrast to blushing ivory skin, braided neatly and bound in a knot at the back of her head. Not conventionally pretty, by any stretch of the imagination, but she did possess an interesting contrast of characteristics that pigeonholed her into the young, freshly attractive category. High cheekbones in an otherwise round face, lush curves and long torso on a figure uncompromisingly short. There was something about the way she stood beneath the sheathed sword mounted on the wall behind her that made him want to take inventory of all vital organs, so he would know if any turned up missing later.
In that moment her gaze found his in the dim room, the hearth fire threw shadows across the low ceiling of carved, thick-twining tree roots, and the entire place went dark.
Chapter Two
Aika vaulted over the bar as her patrons moved and talked excitedly around her. She could just make out the pale line of his jaw, the shadow delineated by the cut of his black pea coat. He was much taller than most, dwarfing her by a full foot, and long-limbed with it. She slipped behind him and stuck the business end of her makeshift weapon in the small of his back.
“Who the hell are you?”
His spine arched away from her, settled reluctantly as she dug further. “There’s a bounty on your head,” he breathed, hardly daring to.
Long Irish vowels snaked around him like smoke. “And you’re here to collect, is that it?”
“Only to warn. You’re in danger, and so is everyone in this bar, everyone in the market. They’ve found you.”
“Really. We’ll see about that.” She shoved him forward. “Walk. All the way to the bar.”
He walked, got tripped up on someone’s bench, and continued walking. All the way to the bar.
“Palms topside. Go on.”
Shocking blue eyes gleamed in the fire-lit dark. At first Declan thought he might be looking into a mirror, but soon realized they belonged to the old man.
“Check the Flame,” he growled. “I’ll watch your friend.”
There was soft movement behind him as she moved away, barely discernible. Then she was gone, a slightly lighter silhouette melting in the black, and he could breathe again. He hadn’t realized the human kidney could twist so far out of reach of imminent stabbing.
“Did you know about this?” the old man demanded.
Declan shook his head. “Bounty came through a few hours ago. Took me this long to find her.”
A grizzled hand reached forward and grasped the pendant dangling around his neck. “I see.”
She returned after a long, uncomfortable quiet as they waited for her verdict. She shook her head, just as the lights came on again. “That was close,” she said to the old man. Then she turned a fierce, sapphire-emerald glare upon Declan. “How did you find me?”
“CCTV feed.”
The old man raised an eyebrow at her. “You’re slipping, my girl.”
She shrugged off the criticism, spilt beer no use crying over. “Did Carl mention anything?”
“Only that a new government initiative was voted in today—to clean up the Burnout Zone, if you please. Apparently the presence of the dregs mar its tourist-drawing landscape.”
“Sounds as though we need another chat with Carl.”
“I’ll see to it.” He nodded toward Declan as he left. “He carries the mark.”
Declan flexed his fingers against the polished wood of the bar. “Can I move now?”
She looked at him in the distrustful manner of a fastidious housewife who’d spotted dust on a host’s mantle but didn’t like to point it out. “If you like.”
He sat with relief, though he was careful not to make any sudden movements. To his surprise she poured two whiskies and shoved one his direction, taking the other for herself. “Thanks.”
“Tell me about this bounty.”
“It’s sponsored by someone called The Agent.” Her face closed off even further, if that were possible. “What’d you do to piss him off?”
“Them. Dreamtech.” She crossed her arms and pointed her chin in the direction of the crowded bar. “Not just me. All of us. You heard the old man. I’m just the one who looks out for them.”
“I don’t play by their rules, either, but you don’t see me collecting bounties from mega conglomerates.”
She cocked a challenging brow. “Maybe you should try harder.”
He cocked one back. “Maybe you should be more careful.”
Holding his steady gaze, she released her weapon onto the counter. He stared at the potato peeler in disbelief before turning his incredulity on her.
Her mouth quirked at one corner. “Don’t look so disappointed. I still could have killed you.”
Then she further twisted him about by pouring a beer and setting it before him by way of emphasis. He stared at the pale rose liquid foaming in its glass with gentle invitation. “I figured you for a red.”
After a moment he pulled the glass into the protective curve of his arms. Of course she was right.
When the old man returned from his search with a shake of his head, Aika reached for the great bell on its shelf and rang it overhead. “I’m sure you’ve guessed we’re having a bit of a situation tonight,” she called over the groans and grumblings. “We’ll put a keg in the pit for you and a kettle on the fire, but we need to sort this out.”
The bar slowly emptied as she cleared dishes and put the big iron kettle on to boil in the kitchen. By the time it was ready, they were the only three left. Aika didn’t look at him, this stranger in their midst, though she felt him shooting glances at her with eyes that saw far too much. He was the embodiment of all her weaknesses. Tall, lithe, ink black hair and eyes of devil’s blue—with all the temptation implied. For a startling moment she felt a pang for her Jamie-boy, who’d had the same smile, hesitant at first but then lighting up the room with the power of a small galaxy.
She escaped back into the kitchen and shifted a dolly under a keg, hauled the piping kettle atop the pile along with the tap, and shoved the lot into the cellar and out the door. She settled the keg in a corner and moved the kettle to the grate over the fire pit. There she braced her hands on the rim and stared down into the fire as though it offered answers to questions she lacked the courage to ask.
The Agent. It was what she called him in the secret part of her mind. How long had it been?
She’d truly believed they were going to do it right. Really protect them from the effects of the war just passed, prepare them for the war yet to come. Dreamtech, military subcontractor, harbinger of dreams.
Of nightmares. Only no one knew it yet.
They were also the architects of the biosphere, in part due to her work with their head of security. And now they were looking for her. It could only mean they were up to something again, and they didn’t want her in the way. Or, they wanted her back.
She looked in the cauldron again. It was full. Her mouth skewed to one side in an ironic smile as she turned away. She tapped the keg with more force than was strictly necessary and returned to the pub as the dregs came out of
the shadows to continue their interrupted meal.
The old man and the newcomer had gathered at the end of a table with drinks and a tangible aura of challenge to negotiate between them. She took her place next to the old man and waited.
Declan didn’t back down under her razor-edge regard. “If I found you, it’s only a matter of time before they do too.”
“He’s right.” In place of his perpetual knitting, the old man had opted for the potatoes. Probably to stop her using the peeler in cold blood. “It’s fight-or-flight time, my girl.”
Aika found herself gazing at the sword on the wall behind the bar, innocuous in its sheath. Tonight it seemed to fill the room. She shook herself free of its hold. “There’s nowhere to go.”
“Try one of the gates.”
She shook her head. “Nearest one’s miles away, and my ride’s out of commission.” Convenient, that. She could move through the between, but not return home unless it was through a stone circle and her family could retrieve her. A consequence of the choice she made during the war.
Declan didn’t know what made him say it. The words escaped before he could capture them. “Stay with me.” He shrugged off the heat of their joint stares. “They’re apparently not interested in me. My place should be safe enough for the time being.”
“For the time being,” she echoed.
“Don’t knock it,” the old man chided in tones she knew only too well.
She raised her eyebrows at him. “You’re joking.”
“It may be your only option at this point. You need time to regroup and think.”
“You don’t actually trust him? He could have gotten that cross anywhere.”
Declan didn’t appreciate being spoken of as though he were a recalcitrant houseplant. “It was my mother’s.”
“See? His mother’s. Can’t argue with that.”
Aika rolled her eyes and poured herself another shot of whiskey, knocking it back. “I’ll go somewhere on my own. I don’t need protection.”
The old man scowled. “No, but they do. Don’t get yourself killed over pride.”
“It’s not pride. It’s practicality. What if my presence gets him killed instead?”
“He has resources with which to defend himself. He made it this far. But you’ll bring the dragon down on our heads if you stay, and we’re not ready for it.”
She narrowed lantern-lit ocean eyes at him. “You watching over us again, old man?”
He went back to his peeling, smug. “It was my job long before it was yours.”
That’s what it came down to, really. She didn’t trust Declan, but she trusted the old man. His wisdom was born of an infinity of experience and a natural inclination to see the scattered patterns of the now merging into the kaleidoscope images of the future. If he said this was no time to fight, she believed him. But damn, she hated retreat, strategic or otherwise.
Half an hour later Aika and Declan trooped along the tumbled-down labyrinth tunnels, Declan on her heels lest he end up lost. The waves of distrust flowing in her wake told him she wouldn’t lose much sleep over his disappearance.
“Where exactly are we? Still in the old Underground?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then where?”
She stopped, causing him to slip on a wet patch of stone if he didn’t want to fall over her. “Why did you come here tonight?”
“To warn you,” he repeated. He thought they’d established this already.
She turned, her eyes gleaming strangely in the dim light of her torch. “But why look for me in the first place?”
He’d hoped to have more time before this discussion reared its ugly head. “I wasn’t looking for you, exactly. Just…someone.”
“Someone like me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He searched for words, but found them fleeing in all directions beyond his desperate grasp. “I thought they…you…might be able to help.”
“Help?”
“Isn’t that the sort of thing you do?” His voice was a velvet purr in the dark.
Aika couldn’t believe his audacity. Her beam of light swung back in the direction of the pub. “For them,” she said.
“This is for them too. Please.”
She looked way up into blue eyes that hoarded even the smallest, weakest light for their own, but couldn’t read them. This was unusual enough to intrigue her despite her inclination to leave him where he stood.
She reached for the slim silver chain around his neck, pulling the small cross from beneath his black shirt. The diamond-shaped coil in the center shone like mother of pearl. “Your mother?”
“She was a healer.”
She turned away and resumed her forced march from the haven she and the old man had made after the war. “I hope your couch is comfortable.”
They passed through a relatively intact barrel vault in silence, where the atmosphere opened and air began to flow. A thin veneer of moonlight washed clean the cement steps leading up into the outside world.
Her boots made rhythmic slaps as she hurried up into the Burnout Zone. Together they navigated a path through the jumbled streets only she could intuit. This is where the worst of it had been, through multiple assaults that destroyed everything in its path. It made him uncomfortable to be here, quite apart from the abandoned, oversized child’s game of blocks around them. It felt like failure, devastating and complete.
She stopped when the streets weren’t so uneven, where more than a few of the buildings remained upright. The cross at St. Paul’s stood stark against the indigo sky in the distance, with the pearly, nearly invisible sheen of the biosphere overhead. “This’ll do.”
“For what? I’m across the river.”
“Blackfriars?”
“Waterloo.”
She closed her eyes, picturing it. “Right.”
He nearly jumped out of his skin when she took his hand. Her skin burned with an inherent heat that seemed to grow with every heartbeat. “What are you—
“Hold on to that cross of yours. And me.”
“I don’t—
Too late.
They entered the crushing pressure of between, Declan’s ears ringing as he moved with primordial slowness, clenching tight to her hand.
Release was sudden and electrifying. He collapsed onto the pavement down the road from his loft, hands digging into the asphalt with pain that equaled relief. Wind passed through the trees across the road, which he knew to be impossible. The biosphere shielded the city from the atmosphere; it didn’t lend itself to environmental conceits.
He looked up into her still face, glowing in the intermittent light of a buzzing streetlight. Her eyes were unreadable, keeping her secrets.
“Let’s not do that again,” he said, pushing himself to his feet, unfolding his long spine until it creaked.
She gave him the first genuine smile in his brief if eventful experience of her. “Spoilsport.”
Declan’s loft wasn’t what Aika expected. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, she’d expected, but this wasn’t it. A scrubby gray corduroy sofa that wouldn’t have been out of place in the pricier section of the black market dominated the back brick wall. A side wall was lined end to end with mismatched industrial shelving loaded down with stacks of notebooks, stripped computers, neatly organized boxes and bins of parts. The floor was studded with a threadbare rug here and there between mottled concrete pillars. She set her duffel and pack on the floor.
“Sorry it’s only the couch.”
“No matter.” She moved to the tall, dingy windows. Dreamtech’s peak protruded in the distance, way over in what was once Hyde Park, now the new industrial block. The source of the biosphere. Its electric glow reminded her of the all-seeing eye on the back of the old American dollar bill.
“Hungry?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
He took his seat at his computer bank, moving aside a cold cup of coffee. Now that he had her, it was plain
he wasn’t quite sure what to do with her.
Aika sensed his discomfort. “Suppose you let me in on this brilliant plan of yours. You do have a plan?”
“Thing is, I’ve had a lot of plans over the years, but they’ve all come up against one fatal hitch.”
“And that is?”
“Dreamtech’s security. Get past that, we have a chance of bringing it down. Bring down Dreamtech’s security, bring down Dreamtech.”
Aika turned to the windows once more, focusing on that distant, candlewick point. “They recruited me once. Years ago.”
Dec stared at her, stunned. “What?”
“I really thought they might do what they promised, you know? Be the good guys. Protect people. They’d made their money ten times over as military subcontractors, had the power and resources needed to remake the necessary government when the old one hashed it.”
“You worked for them?”
“More fool I.” She leaned her temple against the cool, dusty window. “You asked me what I’d done to piss them off. I tested the security system designed by their brilliant wunderkind, the one meant for their new headquarters.”
“And?”
“The Second Blitz came.”
“Then the biosphere, in time for the refugee surge.”
“I disappeared.” She leaned against the brick façade and tilted her head back, eyes closed. Weary to the marrow.
“What did they take from you? Besides your illusions.”
She looked at him. Wondered if she should tell him.
“It was my parents,” he offered when she remained silent. “They took my parents.”
The corner of her mouth twitched, there and gone again. “My parents are alive and well a long way from here.”
“Who’s the old man, your grandfather?”
“Something like that.”
“They’ve beefed up security since your tenure. And they’re watching you now. The only way, the best way, is to take it down from inside.”
“A whistle-blower?” She pushed her spine from the wall. “I burned those bridges a long time ago.”