“Sit down and enjoy please,” Jet said, the lights reflecting off his black hair. Jet black some would say, thus his nickname. She wasn’t entirely sure it was real.
Rin and Grey slipped out of their packs, keeping them close at their sides. The exchange would come later. First they would eat, and thankfully Jet let them. They tried not to look as hungry as they were, but it was hard not to devour every last morsel. Jet kept busy talking into the air, probably on a conference call with men and women only he could see.
She watched him in her peripheral vision field. She’d heard he was ten years her senior, but his Asian features made him appear younger. In different garb, he could’ve been mistaken for a Samurai warrior.
“Shall I have them pack you a box?” Jet asked like he always did when Grey and Rin’s consumption slowed. They both nodded, glad he didn’t make them ask. They never allowed themselves to fill up so much that they wouldn’t be able to run later, which meant not eating nearly what their empty stomachs demanded. Coming home safely from a meeting with Jet always meant good food for at least a week.
The cuisine specialist who’d brought the tray appeared again, carefully stacking their plates and the leftover food. When he left, Jet got down to business.
He leaned forward across the table. “I assume you’ve been successful?”
Grey unzipped her pack, removing a hard, silver case. Made from an alloy that could withstand radiation and even redflare lasers, Grey had bartered for it when she was thirteen. Pressing her thumb to the fingerprint reader on its side, the box unlocked with a click, and she turned it around for Jet to see.
Nestled in the middle of the box were three of the most valuable items she’d ever smuggled into the Alamo Republic. Jet’s slight gasp confirmed he agreed.
“Where did . . .” Jet waved a hand. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. You got them.”
Carefully lifting one of the treasures out of the box, Grey turned it around and marveled that she was actually holding something people might kill for.
“A real, live book,” Grey said, handing it to Jet.
“Impressive, ladies.” He took it from her, opening the paper covers of Apology by Plato.
When Mazdaar took over the infrastructure of the Americas, physical books of all kinds were officially banned, and Mazdaar permanently deleted every electronic book that hadn’t been published with their own imprint. Under threat of imprisonment, most citizens finally did surrender their books, but some fled to the wilderness, taking their volumes into hiding with them.
These weren’t the first books they’d sold to Jet, but it had taken Grey and Rin six weeks and hundreds of grueling miles of scouting to locate these three, and they’d had to buy them with every remaining piece of silver they’d saved.
“Let me see the others.” Jet extended his hand to Grey, but she only stared at it.
“First, our payment,” Grey said.
With a dramatic flourish, Jet nodded but said, “And my feast wasn’t enough?”
It was a game he liked to play that luckily Grey recognized for what it was. What had first unnerved her and almost made her forget the arrangement entirely felt now like just an irritating waste of their time.
Jet snapped his fingers, and the drone stepped up to the table. Reaching into her uniform pocket, she deposited a small felt pouch on the clear table.
Grey picked it up, careful not to touch the drone’s metallic hand, and counted the silver coins inside. Currency of any kind was illegal. Now with a scan of a palm, the cost of anything could be deducted from your official Mazdaar account. Try to use anything else and you’d end up in an interrogation room.
Rin removed a safe box from her pack, setting it on the table as well. She unlocked it and slid it toward Jet, and the contents immediately made Jet smile. The box was packed with cigarettes, a commodity banned even before books. Each “smoke stick” as Grey liked to call them would be worth at least a day’s wages.
Jet gave them another bow. “I am satisfied.”
Grey carefully counted their payment while Jet and the drone unpacked the cigarettes into a box of their own. She often wondered who would buy them in cities where no-smoking laws threatened capital punishment. Maybe Jet sold them to underground clubs or to some of the government officials who had no trouble breaking the laws they enforced on others. She really didn’t care. Not as long as they had their agreed payment.
Except Jet had tried to short them. Again.
Grey slammed the silver onto the table. “You’re two hundred grams short.”
Jet lifted a cigarette and sniffed it long and hard. “Quality’s mediocre.”
“It’s the best there is.”
“I like better.”
She crossed her arms. Rin gave her a worried look. Who did they think they were, two girls trying to make a deal with a man like Jet? With a wave of his hand he could probably have them both arrested and handed over to Mazdaar. But they’d been taking care of themselves for five years and had learned how to do business, and Grey wasn’t going to let this slide.
She focused on Jet but was keenly aware of the drone standing beside him. They’d even gone to the trouble of wrinkling her bioskin around the eyes where crow’s feet would normally appear. What programming had they given this series? Late models could effectively restrain and immobilize the strongest human.
Jet closed his cigarette box with a sigh. “I have paid you what your product is worth.”
“Which is not what we agreed.”
He waved his hand at the drone, and she slowly turned her head to stare at Grey like she was sizing her up. The cuisine specialist returned, carrying their food packs. He pushed them across the glass table toward Grey and Rin with a smile. They were vacuum sealed and temperature regulated to keep from spoiling under the hottest of conditions.
Grey placed the bundles in her pack and slipped the load onto her shoulders. With a nod to Rin, whose forehead still scrunched with concern, Grey led the way to the door through which they’d entered. “Unlock it.”
For the longest moment nothing happened, but then the light turned green, and the two girls left the room.
“We will speak again,” Jet said to their backs.
Out in the hallway, escorted by Carr who’d apparently been waiting for them, Grey muttered, “Not likely.”
* * *
Chapter 3
Grey’s pulse quickened with every step down the corridor. They had to get out of here. She’d stood up to Jet before, but somehow this was different. He seemed bolder than ever, and never had a drone looked at her like that.
She could feel tension radiating off Rin walking beside her, but neither of them allowed their movements to give away their fear. Not even when they were marching down the bunker’s exterior tunnel.
Grey and Rin quickly ascended the stairs and climbed up into the shack. The trap door sunk back into the floor, locking with a final click. Grey sighed, pushing the unruly strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ears.
“How can he do that?” Rin looked ready to cry.
Grey peeked out the cracks of the bowed wooden slats for any sign of trouble outside. The sun was dropping quickly. They needed to hurry to be home before dark.
Nothing stirred except a vulture riding the thermal winds.
“Let’s go,” Grey said.
“But it’s not fair.”
Grey grabbed Rin by the shoulders. She’d learned how to mask her feelings for Rin’s sake early on, but no matter how hard Rin tried, her youthful inexperience always shone through.
She patted her sister once on her freckled cheek. “Nothing’s fair. That’s our life.”
“What about—”
“Rin, we have to get home.”
“Will he let us get home?”
That was the big question, really. They didn’t know the full extent of Jet’s influence. He definitely had some major resources, but was he in cahoots with Mazdaar?
“Focus
on Tram and Trif. They’re waiting for us.”
Grey and Rin stepped from the shack, squinting in the daylight. As they walked, Grey scanned every cactus and scrub with her lenses. Anything could be hiding out here.
“What should we do about Jet?”
She increased her pace, Rin right behind her. She’d never lied to her little sister, but there were plenty of things she hadn’t shared. Like how much danger they were in on these jobs.
A faint snap made her freeze.
“Grey?” Rin whispered
She held up her hand. The ocelli wouldn’t be much help if something snuck up behind them.
“Do you hear something?”
Rin came to stand beside her, a flash of fear in her eyes. “I turned it off while we were eating. Grey, I’m—”
She ripped her pistol from its holster just as a drone twice her size pushed through the scrub. One glance at its tan uniform and the red, seven-pointed-star emblem on its chest pegged it as a Mazdaar border patroller, complete with a handheld derma-ray aimed right at them.
“Identify,” he ordered.
Grey clenched her jaw. The weapon’s high-powered waves excited the atoms in a person’s skin, making it feel like it was on fire. She had about three seconds before he would confirm they weren’t connected and detain them.
The drone’s eyes blinked, and she was startled at how human its male face looked.
It’s just a machine. Just a machine.
Without warning, the drone turned on Rin and shot her point blank with the derma-ray. Her sister screamed and fell, writhing in the sand.
Grey fired her own weapon at the drone’s chest, wincing at the deafening sound and the kickback from the coilgun. If the drone hadn’t already called for reinforcements, that blast surely would. The drone stumbled backward. Its derma-ray dropped to the desert floor, and Grey pulled Rin to her feet. “You okay?”
Rin nodded. Though excruciating, a derma-ray’s effects instantly disappeared the moment the weapon was directed elsewhere.
“Then run!”
She pushed her sister forward as the drone let out a low moan behind them. Grey swung around. The patroller clutched its chest with a gloved hand, crimson blood oozing through his tunic. She suddenly felt nauseous.
Drones didn’t have blood.
“Grey!”
“No, no, no . . .” She started toward him, but Rin latched onto her arm and jerked her away.
“I thought he was—”
“We have to go now!”
She forced herself to follow her sister, glancing over her shoulder at the bleeding man who was not a drone at all. She’d aimed for his heart. He could die, but if she stayed to help him she and Rin would be dead as well.
“There’s nothing you can do,” Rin said. “Don’t think about it. Not now.”
Grey finally ran too, stuffing her horror as best she could. They had to survive. She couldn’t fail her sister now.
Twenty minutes later, they reached the fence and repeated the process of slipping under the wire in reverse. Grey took the chameleon cloth with them. They wouldn’t be able to return this way again.
It was almost an hour of painstaking travel, sneaking from cactus to cactus before they reached the rim rocks. The massive sandstone boulders overlooked the desert, providing a natural cover that allowed them to finally let down their guard. Mazdaar wouldn’t bother sending patrols out here.
Slipping through a cleft in the rock just large enough for a human to pass through, Grey and Rin walked into a small clearing that was completely surrounded by the boulders towering hundreds of feet above them. They paused to watch and listen with their respective devices, and Rin gave her a small nod.
“It’s my fault,” Rin said. “I should’ve been listening. I—”
Grey shook her head. “It wasn’t.”
“I was sure he was a drone too.”
“Since when do they send men on border patrol?” Grey cursed. She had to remind herself he’d shot Rin first and would’ve turned them in to officials who would do far worse. But still—she’d never shot a human before.
Two whinnies greeted them, and Rin bounded over to Tram and Trif who were contentedly munching on the wildflowers and prickly pear cactus growing in the clearing. The coats of the zorses were a light brown, but their faint, telltale black stripes spoke of their zebra heritage.
Rin threw her arms around the neck of the smaller zorse, Trif, and Grey had to smile at her sister’s affection for the animal.
“Told you we’d be back,” Rin said into Trif’s neck as he nuzzled her shoulder.
Grey watched them for a moment. Around the zorse Rin was just a girl again, and Grey realized she’d do anything in her power to keep these pets for her sister. Which wasn’t going to be easy, since she’d made up her mind about Jet.
“Hey there, boy,” Grey approached Tram who, though the larger of the two, was less dominant and usually hung back. He allowed Grey to stroke his neck, and they enjoyed each other’s company in silence. But the slowly-darkening sky reminded Grey their mission wasn’t yet complete.
“Time to saddle up,” she called to Rin, and they set to work preparing the animals for the ride home. The girls stripped out of their dirty, sweat-caked camo, stuffing the clothes into their saddle bags with the food packs. They compressed the backpacks, tied them behind the saddles, and quickly dressed in cooler, loose-fitting tunics and canvas pants.
Grey gave Rin a leg up onto Trif then climbed into Tram’s saddle and led the way out down the only other path between the boulders. There was just enough room here for them to ride single-file without scraping their legs against the rock.
They rode silently for the next two hours across the desert terrain. The blue sky darkened to a deep purple, leaving only the tops of the distant mountains still glowing in sunlight. Grey took in a deep breath of the sage-scented air, allowing herself to close her eyes for just a second. She’d done what she had to.
As they neared home, pine trees and scrub oak gave them better cover. The air cooled and blew across their faces as night fell. With a tap to her bracelet controller, Grey zeroed the ocelli in on the elephant-sized boulder with the flat top, searching for any signs that their location had been compromised. Was there a camouflaged drone hiding behind one of those trees?
Grey stared at the boulder that meant their journey was almost over. Her whole body ached, and she couldn’t wait to take a cool, refreshing bath.
“We’re done with Jet,” Grey said.
“What? But how can we survive without—”
“We will,” Grey said. “Somehow we will, Rin.”
She didn’t tell her sister she had no idea how. For the past five years they’d lived this life, sometimes bringing prohibited goods to people like Jet, other times smuggling stuff out of the Amarillo Zone for the few people in the Preserve who could pay. It had become familiar, and they were good at it.
“If only Mom and Dad . . .”
Grey nodded.
They didn’t talk about them often, but the loss of their parents still cut deeply. Grey had been twelve, Rin three years younger. One day Mom and Dad went out on what was supposed to be a week-long hunting trip and never came back. If it hadn’t been for the food and water their parents had stockpiled and their neighbor Mrs. March’s kind help, the girls would’ve starved. For years Grey held on to the hope that someday they’d come walking back home with some grand story to tell. She’d never admit it to Rin, but Grey now realized that had just been the desperate dream of an orphaned daughter.
Tram and Trif sped up now. As hidden as the compound was, the zorses knew exactly where they were. Fresh water and their dinner awaited them.
Loosening her reins, Grey let Tram pick the path across the rough terrain. At the boulder, the sisters dismounted, leading the zorses into the stand of gnarled scrub oak that was their front yard. They waited, listening, watching. The night’s first and brightest star, Vega, glistened above them. Finally, Grey approa
ched the boulder.
Be my rock of refuge, to which I can always go.
She wished the snippet of a verse her mother used to recite didn’t always spring to mind when she saw the boulder. As a little girl she’d listened to Mom’s memorized Scripture lines, and they always seemed to pop up at the most inopportune times.
To the untrained eye, the rock was a natural part of the landscape, a fixture for hundreds of years. Which was exactly how it was designed to look. In reality, the man-made hunk of gypsum concealed the entrance to their subterranean home.
During the day, they usually let the zorses roam outside since they were trained to always return. If a flyby spotted Tram and Trif, their presence wouldn’t give Rin and Grey away. Herds of horse, zebra, and zorse roamed the Preserve, which gave the girls comfort. If anything ever happened to them, Tram and Trif could eventually find their way into one of the herds.
Rin unlocked the door in the rock using her thumbprint. The gray metal panel slid open, and they led the zorses down the ramp, inside to the second security door. Automatic lights switched on after the first door closed behind them. Powered by the hidden solar panels that lined the ridge, they provided more than enough illumination for the silo.
Circular and about a thousand feet square, they’d converted the top room of the dwelling into comfortable living quarters for the animals. Half the cement floor was covered with pine needles on bartered rubber mats that had to be cleaned daily, but neither of them minded the chore. The ceiling was tallest here, over twenty feet, and air vents to the surface helped keep the smell down. Drains in the floor helped with cleanup too.
Once Tram and Trif were settled and their tack secured and checked for wear, Grey and Rin made their way to the door against the far wall, stomping their feet on the scrap of rug they kept there to clean their boots. They passed through and headed down the stairs with heavy steps.
Finally, they were home.
* * *
Chapter 4
So, what was your favorite?” Rin was perched on a step halfway up the main level’s spiral staircase, her legs dangling in the space below.
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