by Sean Grigsby
Sarah looked up to what she would have called the sky, had this been Earth. But no stars looked back at her, just the green haze stretched over the city like a mosquito net, and the fuzzy image of the space gate a little farther out.
“Where does the city end?” Sarah tapped Dipity’s shoulder.
“Huh?”
“The city.” Sarah raised her voice. “Where does it stop?”
“You ever seen a snowglobe?”
“No.”
“How about a plate cover?”
Sarah shrugged, even though Dipity focused on the glowing street ahead. “I think I know what that is.”
“Same concept. The city’s flat, and the Veil covers it. Oubliette ends at the Veil.”
“You guys ever try to go through?”
Dipity groaned. “Damn it, what did we tell you about asking questions?”
For the next few minutes Sarah stayed quiet and took in the rundown buildings and false wind caressing her cheeks, but the ride ended just as Sarah was wishing it would go on forever. They stopped outside a building as wide as the surrounding giants were tall. The shop didn’t display a sign above the door, but Sarah figured they’d arrived at Grindy’s.
Dipity turned off her cyclone and when the metal touched the street Sarah hopped off and waited on the curb for one of them to tell her what to do. Lena got to the door in two strides and went in without a word. Hurley Girly told Sarah to follow with a toss of her head, and once they were all inside Sarah let the door shut behind her with a high-pitched click.
Back on Earth her father would sometimes take her and her brother to the hardware store when he needed to replenish his laser cutter’s battery or purchase a new tool for the next to-be-unfinished project he had lined up in hopes of selling it. He always said places like that hardware store would be around for the next several centuries. “The tools may change,” he had said, “but the need will always be there.”
Grindy’s looked just like that store. Of course, it was ten times bigger and had more people rushing here and there, working on strange machines that would make her father stammer and cry in appreciation. And it was awfully loud.
Lena waved to the older woman Sarah recognized from the receiving stage. Grindy. She was griping at one of her workers while they traced a laser on a flat piece of glass that looked like it had come from one of Oubliette’s buildings. In fact, everything looked like it was just a recycled piece of the city.
Stopping in the middle of her lecture, Grindy smiled at Lena. The two of them hugged and shared some words Sarah couldn’t hear. She’d stopped walking, watching all the gadgets being built, and the rest of the Daughters waited way ahead of her.
Grindy waved Sarah over. “How you getting along?”
“I’m still alive,” Sarah said.
The older woman grinned in an agreeable way. “Well,” she wiped her brow with the back of her hand, “let’s get somewhere we can talk without risking laryngitis.” She pointed to Sarah and Lena. “Just these two, though. I don’t want the rest of you crowding my office.”
It was an office, in a way. Empty shelves lined the walls, but it wasn’t clear if they’d always been there or if Grindy had put them in herself. A desk made of empty manna boxes stood in front of a black glass chair that resembled the melted remains of a statue Sarah would have seen in a city’s business district.
“Where you from originally?” Grindy said, as she took her seat in the melted chair.
There were no other places to sit, so Lena and Sarah both remained standing.
“Scranton,” Sarah said. “Well, Blakely. I always say Scranton because no one ever knows where the other is.”
“You’re right,” Grindy said. She raised a questioning hand to Lena. “She always this fidgety?”
Lena smirked. “I think you make her nervous.”
Fidgety? Sarah thought she was doing a good job, being the quiet, confident new Daughter they expected her to be. It made her wonder what a mess she’d been the first night she got here.
“Mexico City, myself,” said Grindy. “We bring the places we left behind with us, yeah? Thing you got to understand is, you have to take what you can use and let the rest fall back through the Veil.”
“What’s the Veil anyway?” Sarah asked. “I keep hearing about it.”
Grindy cocked an eye to Lena. “You haven’t been telling her what she needs to know?”
“Ava was supposed to be handling it.” Lena sighed. “I’ve had other stuff on my mind. I’ll make sure it gets taken care of.”
“They told me not to ask questions,” Sarah said. “So I didn’t.”
“You’re smart,” Grindy said. “The Veil is what keeps the air we breathe from flowing out into space. It also ensures we never leave either. You and the others in the shipment came through because our dear friends back home in the UCNA install a device in the shipments that allows them through the Veil. Soon as that happens, though, pfft.” She snapped her fingers. “Thing gets fried so we can never make use of it. Got to hand it to those culos. They know what they’re doing.”
“So, that’s why no one has ever tried to escape.”
Grindy bunched her lips and looked at Lena as she said, “Oh, several have tried. But like I said, without one of those devices, no one can get through the Veil. But then what? I can build just about anything for the street. Space…”
“Grindy knows more about engineering and machines than anybody on Earth or Oubliette combined,” Lena said.
Grindy beamed. “You’re just trying to get free repairs from flattery.”
“Is it working?”
“Hell, no!” Grindy laughed. “But don’t let me stop you from trying.”
Lena dropped her smile and her amicable vibe. It scared Sarah how her gang’s head could do it so quickly. “Pao says they’re nowhere close to bringing us back home.”
“What’s forgotten is easy to stay that way.” Grindy nodded. “Hell, Lena, I’m sorry. But you should have guessed as much.”
The room went quiet. Sarah didn’t even want to swallow and interrupt whatever unsavory moment she’d gotten wrapped up in.
“Your rang gun!” Grindy raised a finger and bent down behind the manna box desk.
When she came back up, she held the same device that the other Daughters had strapped to their right arms. It looked so glossy, it reflected the yellow glow of the room’s dim light.
“OK,” Grindy said, beckoning Sarah over with a finger. “When I strap this on and power it up… you know about the truce and keeping your right arm down?”
Sarah nodded, feeling strangely proud. She was becoming a part of something, the lowest on the tier, but still important. The first few days, the thought of dropping out and hiding away as a dweller crossed her mind several times. The desire to leave had grown hot when Hurley Girly and Dipity would dump water on her from the top of the stairwell, or when Ava would pop out of nowhere, scaring the crap out of her. She wondered if she wanted to be involved with these cruel women, to be a Daughter. But it seemed on Oubliette there could be no greater honor. It must have been what girl scouts felt like when they received their first gun, police cadets when given their badge.
“Now, you don’t get as old as me being a fool, at least not in this city.” Grindy strapped the rang onto Sarah.
It felt like her arm had always been missing something until that point. The rang completed her. Martial arts had been the only thing her father supported as an extracurricular activity, being that he could teach her and her brother himself, and had friends who would let them join one of their classes at no charge.
But Sarah had always felt underwhelmed. It came too easily to her. She was better than her brother and anyone else in the free classes. It had gotten to where she’d go to the library for advanced books on different styles of fighting, and would use one of the study rooms to practice.
This strange new weapon, the rang, was a game changer.
“I’m not going to let you
shoot up the place, trying to figure out how to aim the damned thing. Lena will turn off your safety when you get back to your ganghouse to practice. But…” Grindy pressed a switch on the side and the rang lit up with blue light. The dullest of hums vibrated through Sarah’s arm, just like the cyclones, but on a smaller scale.
“Wow,” Sarah whispered.
“It gets better,” Lena said. “Wait till you get to shoot it.”
“Practicing.” Grindy raised her eyebrows at Lena like a mother ensuring her kids stayed in the backyard while they played.
Lena only grinned. “Can you get Taylor to set her up with Loveless’s old cyclone? I need to talk to you about some stuff.” She glanced at Sarah. “In private.”
Grindy nodded. “Sure, sure. Pao, was it? Go out there and get one of the Daughters to take you to Taylor. Sure hope that crazy blue hair of yours means you can ride. If not, you’re sure fucked.”
Sarah breathed heavier. She’d never even driven a car, gotten shipped before she ever had a chance to take a driver’s test. She wondered if some of the former gang recruits never made it past the riding lessons. An image came to mind of her face bloody and squished on the smooth glass of an Oubliette street, but she quickly shook the thought away.
“Taylor. Ride. Got it.” Sarah made for the door. The two other women watched her leave, and without shame or any sense of sentiment, Sarah prayed it wouldn’t be the last time she’d see them.
Chapter 8
After Sarah left, Lena turned back to Grindy. “There’s some bad shit you need to know about, but it can’t leave this room.”
“With you there’s no other kind of shit.”
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking–”
“Ain’t much else to do around here if you don’t like pussy.”
“Will you shut the fuck up and listen?”
Grindy put her hands behind her head and leaned back in her glass throne, smirking. The old sheila always liked to rib Lena. “There’s something bugging you,” Grindy said. “Spill it.”
“The truce is broken.”
That got her attention. The eyes, always the eyes. But Grindy didn’t jump up from her relaxed position just yet. “First I’ve heard of it. Did one of the Amazons blast an Onyx? My damn dwellers are slacking in getting me information.”
“No one besides us and the Daughters know. It happened when this last shipment came in.”
“Shit fire.” Grindy sat up at that. “Farica’s last in command. You took her out.”
“She drew on me. It was a legit kill, but I figured Farica wouldn’t see it that way and since we were the only witnesses, it makes it look shady. Plus… the truce.”
“Would be down the drain and swimming the Sludge by now. Another war. Blood in the streets and all that jazz. You hid it to keep the truce.”
“It’s what I figured you would have done.”
The sound that came from Grindy’s throat could be called a groan, if a lion’s roar could be called a cough. Grindy would have thrown something if the office had anything left to grab.
“I’m not mad at you.” Grindy lowered her face to her hands and rubbed at it for what felt like hours before she sat up again.
Lena chewed on her lip, drummed her fingers against the side of her leg.
“I know you can get a little psycho out there,” Grindy said, “but I know you always think things through. If you say it couldn’t be helped, it couldn’t be helped.”
“Have you heard anything about the Amazons?”
“Like what? If they know what really happened? Shit, Horror. None of this would be such news to me if I’d caught any wind of something like that.”
Lena breathed and paced to the other side of Grindy’s office. This next part would have to be done right. Grindy could smell bullshit a klick away. “No. That’s not what I mean. I’ve been wondering about the baby.”
Grindy wrinkled her eyebrows.
Shit. She always did that when she thought Lena had something up her sleeve or boiling in her brain.
“She’s still alive, last I heard. Farica’s become a regular mother of the year. Even getting her dwellers to trade for some manna so she can squeeze juice out for the kid. It would be the strangest thing I’ve seen on Oubliette, but maybe this baby can change Farica for the better.”
“Who says monsters can’t change? That stupid twat doesn’t ride around with the baby does she?”
“How would I know? I’m sure she leaves her with one of the dwellers or something. What’s up with you?” Grindy said. “Why are you so interested? You usually move on pretty quickly after a shipment.”
Lena clamped her teeth. She’d pushed the issue a little too hard. Back off before she gets wise. “Look, no one under ten years – much less ten months – has ever stepped out of the box. I just feel a little raw there’s someone that careless and stupid to send a baby out here.”
“No more careless than your mother or mine. I hate she’ll grow up a fucking cannibal, but at least the girl will have some kind of life.”
“There is no life here,” Lena whispered, looking at her boots.
Grindy squinted her eyes, like it would help her hear better. “What?”
“I said let’s get your old ass out to wherever Taylor is showing my new sheila her cyclone. We don’t want to miss this.”
Chapter 9
Sarah was wringing her hands as Lena and Grindy walked outside in time for Taylor to bring the cyclone from the back. Taylor was a dweller, grandfathered in from before the truce, when freshly arrived shippees weren’t the only ones who had to worry about getting slaughtered by the Amazons.
Taylor hadn’t said anything, not when the other Daughters had brought Sarah out back to find her, or even after Sarah told her what she was there for. At first, Sarah thought she might have been deaf or mute like Sterling, but she didn’t respond to any of Sarah’s hand signs either.
Sarah’s bike glided over the glass, low hum flowing from the gorgeous blue wheels, the black curves of its body shimmering. Sarah wasn’t sure if she liked it more than the other cyclones because it would be hers, or if it really was that spectacular.
“Dents are all knocked out,” Taylor said from the bike. “Handlebars rewired and taken in a bit for better steering. Loveless had asked us to do that and I didn’t see a reason not to honor her wish even after–”
“That’ll be fine,” Grindy said. “Shut her down and show Pao how to start it up.”
Taylor sucked on her teeth and pulled back on the handlebars. The wheels dimmed and the cyclone lowered as if it was on a deflating air cushion. “Come on over.”
“Don’t push the wrong button,” Ava shouted as Sarah stepped toward her new ride. “You might blow yourself up.”
“You better not make us pick up all your gory pieces,” Hurley Girly joined in.
There was a heavy whack.
“Ow!” Hurley Girly cried. “Shit, Sterling, what did I do?”
Sarah didn’t turn back to see if Sterling signed. Besides, her eyes were glued to the waiting cyclone.
Taylor crossed her arms. “You ever ride a motorcycle?”
Sarah shook her head.
“Have you at least ridden a bicycle?”
“Yeah, mountain bike.”
“I’m not going to pretend it’s the same thing but, hop on.”
Sarah grabbed a handlebar.
Taylor shouted a strange gargle. “Not like that,” she said. “You don’t want this thing flying off without you. If you’re going to grab something to get on, use that spot just in front of the seat.”
Sarah tried again and eased onto the cyclone. The seat cupped her rear like a dream while leaving enough room to move, especially without having to share it with someone else.
“Nice seat,” Sarah said.
“Glass leather. Maybe I’ll show you how it’s made sometime. It’s the Daughters’ specialty. None of the other gangs know how to burn down the glass just right. But first let’s make sure
you don’t kill yourself on this machine.”
Sarah agreed with a nod of her head, eyes blinking from nerves.
“It’s all in the handlebars,” Taylor said. “They don’t just help you steer, they turn it on, shut it off, speed it up. You can also lock them in place if you need to take your hands off while riding.”
“Like to shoot something?”
“Or someone. But there’s a truce on. Didn’t anybody tell you? Go ahead and grab both handlebars and roll them forward. Just a little! You’re just trying to engage it.”
Sarah took a quivering breath and grabbed both handlebars. They were covered with the same material as her seat. She rolled her hands forward, centimeters at a time, until the cyclone began to rise.
“That’s it,” Taylor said. “Your cyclone is ready to ride.”
Dear god, it was! The blue light rose from below and coursed through the bike like nuclear blood through the veins of a speed-crazed automaton. It hummed and buzzed and ached for street. The light could have been flowing into her own body for all she knew. She could think of no other way to describe it – she and the cyclone were one.
“You think we can let her ride a bit?” Taylor called back to Grindy.
“No other reason we’re out here,” the older woman said. “We’ll stay back, make room for her.”
“Show time,” Taylor said low, thinning her eyes as if to say, “Don’t make me look stupid!”
The Daughters of Forgotten Light, along with Grindy and Taylor, backed off toward Grindy’s shop, leaving an empty square for Sarah to wreck all she wanted – which was not at all, but at least she wouldn’t kill anyone else if she ended up crashing and burning under the blazing wheels.
With a light push of her wrists, Sarah eased the handlebars to roll forward. The cyclone responded and she had to fight for balance before instinct decided to take over. It was just like riding a bike. A big, outer space, light-infused bike.