As long as it wasn’t with the body of one of Nyx’s people.
They brought her down a sinuous hallway lined in tiled mosaics – passages from the Kitab, lovingly detailed and painted over in silver and gold gilt.
“My people tell me you’re a hard woman to break,” Harun said, “so I’m skipping to the end.”
Harun unlocked a door at the far end of the house and opened the portal wide. A massive stone cistern dominated the room, ringed in jars of insects suspended in fluid, much like the ones at the rebuild tank in Henye’s shop, only on a much grander scale.
“Planning a party?” Nyx asked.
Harun flashed a smile. Nyx was dazzled by how white her teeth were. “Of a sort,” she said. She beckoned for the security techs to bring Nyx to the edge of the cistern.
For a moment, Nyx thought Harun meant to rebuild her into some kind of brain-addled monster. She looked over the rim of the cistern and found that most of it was actually underground – it must have been a good ten paces in depth.
And there, chained to a large ring suspended over the basin, was Rhys.
He looked up at her with his big dark eyes, and for a moment Nyx thought he looked terribly like Jahar. On seeing her, there was hope in that gaze. The same hopeful look Jahar gave her when she took him to bed. The look that said, “You’ve found me. You’ll protect me. You’ll never leave me.”
It scared the shit out of her, because she was not here to save him.
Saving people like Rhys and Jahar was never part of the plan. It’s why she no longer believed in the war. It’s why she left the service. She knew just how highly her government valued the bodies it flung at the border. She feared becoming as callous as they were. But she already had, hadn’t she? A long time ago.
Nyx glanced behind Harun. Just more security techs. She needed to keep stalling. She scanned the edges of the room, looking for Anneke. If Anneke wasn’t in the pit, they didn’t have her. Nyx would have dumped the whole team in here to pry information out of a bel dame. You never knew, on a really close team, who the bel dame was fucking. Sometimes it mattered. Sometimes it didn’t. Nyx had planned on getting in here by throwing Rhys outside the door, but not this way.
“Give me what was in the safe,” Harun said.
“We didn’t find a safe,” Nyx said. “Whatever his head opened, you already emptied it.”
“Me?” Harun laughed. “When we blew that tenement open, Jahar and the Plague Sister were already dead, and Meiret was missing. I know exactly one person in this horrible little town who could achieve that.”
“Well, I’m the wrong horrible person.”
Harun gripped a large lever beside the tank. Pulled.
Water flooded into the cistern.
“You left Jahar to die,” Harun said. “Who did you expect him to turn to when we brought him back – you? You abandon your own people to save your feral little skin. Tell this one how many partners you had before putting together this little team? You’re a fuck-up, Nyx. Your service record is a series of fuck-ups.”
“Maybe so,” Nyx said. Rhys was watching her as water filled the basin. She started cutting away her own common sense; she severed the silvery string of compassion she kept slick for negotiating personal interactions. She went numb. Looked at her situation as if from a great height.
This was the plan.
Sacrificing Rhys was part of the plan.
He was just a fucking Chenjan.
Nyx clenched her jaw. Her whole body went tight, as if expecting a blow. She wanted to look away, but couldn’t. It was true about Jahar – she left him to die, back at the front. Him and the rest of her squad, when she fled past them after triggering an acid burst. They’d been melted down into nothing. She thought them all dead where she’d abandoned them, until she saw Jahar’s head staring down at her from the rebuild center’s window.
Harun had put Jahar back together again, tattoo and all.
She had saved him. Nyx had not.
“You make a habit of collecting dead people and tossing them into rebuild chambers?” Nyx said. She watched the water stir around Rhys’s ankles. He looked from Nyx to Harun and back.
“Dead people have more to live for,” Harun said. “I gave Jahar another chance. The magicians left him for dead. So did you, he said.”
The water rushed to Rhys’s knees.
“I don’t have what’s in the safe,” Nyx said. “I suspect Meiret played us both.”
“Meiret is a timid Mhorian. Jahar had her well under control.”
“May have been the other way around,” Nyx said.
Nyx had killed a lot of people. She’d let even more die through neglect. Rhys was just one more. I’m the same person, aren’t I? she thought. She had burned herself up, only to come out the other side exactly the same.
Taite’s signal would get out, Nyx knew. It would be soon enough to save her.
But it would not be soon enough for Rhys.
Nyx hardened her jaw. Her hands and feet were still tied. They’d stripped her of her most obvious weapons. She could just wait this out.
She saw Rhys register that. But there was no shock. Just resignation. He knew her for what she was.
Butcher. Monster.
The same old monster.
Harun grabbed a gun from the nearest security tech and shoved it in Nyx’s face.
“How many do I have to go through?” she said. “How about your sister, instead?” Harun turned, called to her women, “When he’s dead, find Kine so Dasheem and bring–”
No, Nyx thought, watching the water bubble up to Rhys’s waist as his burnous swirled around him. No, not yet.
Her squad screaming. Jahar’s accusing eyes.
Nyx thrust out her bound hands and gripped Harun’s right arm at the elbow. Hard. Nyx yanked them both over into the cistern.
She heard gunfire as they hit the water.
Icy cold engulfed her. Nyx thumped Harun in the sternum with her bound fists. She snapped up in the water and head-butted Harun. Harun crumpled. Nyx freed Harun’s gun and turned it on Rhys.
Rhys cringed.
Nyx took aim.
Above them, she heard the sound of Harun’s women yelling. The water in the tank bubbled up past Rhys’s neck. He gurgled at her.
Nyx took the shot.
Three of them.
Rhys’s restraints popped under the bullets. He yelled something. She saw blood.
She’d shot through one of his hands.
Nyx grabbed the front of his tunic and pushed him behind her. They splashed to the rim of the tank.
Harun’s women lined the opening above them, guns leveled.
“Now what?” Rhys said, cradling his injured hand. “Was this seriously your plan? You’re going to shoot your way out?”
Nyx wondered if saving him had really been a great idea.
Nyx had maybe four more shots, six if Harun had loaded the gun with an extended clip, which wasn’t likely. There were eight women lining the tank. Math wasn’t usually her thing, but this looked especially bad.
“Get me loose,” she said, spitting water. Fuck, she hated water. “There’s a razor blade in my sandal.”
“Give me the gun, Nyx,” he said.
“Why? You want to pray over it? Get my hands free!”
Rhys dove into the water. Yanked off her sandal. Just as he reemerged, one of Harun’s women plunged into the cistern.
Nyx shot her, and dove for cover, taking Rhys with her.
Dumb way to die, Nyx thought, but at least she got to drown Harun in the process.
And the last thing she saw wasn’t going to be that awful look on Rhys’s face.
Under the cold water, Rhys broke away from her. She surfaced under Harun’s body, using it as cover as she broke for air.
As she did, she heard the sound of more shots – not from outside the tank, but inside it.
She peeked out from under the body. Rhys hung on to the side of the cistern, the dead security tech’s o
rganic pistol in his hand. As Nyx watched, he cleanly popped off seven shots, every one of them hitting a security tech in the right shoulder.
“Next will be the head,” Rhys said. “Move back.”
They retreated.
Nyx swam to the edge of the cistern, spitting water.
“Where the fuck did you learn to shoot like that?” she said.
“Camp.”
“Camp what? Camp target practice for self-righteous dancers?”
“Something like that.”
The injured security techs had fled to the far end of the room, but already looked like they were rallying. Rhys cut her bonds.
“You got something against killing?” Nyx asked.
“I won’t kill for you, or anyone. I told you that the day we met.”
“These ones aren’t going to stay down long.”
“If they get up,” he said, louder, “I’ll hit them again.” Rhys got to his feet. He pressed his bleeding left hand to his side.
“Let me see your hand,” she said. She pulled herself out of the cistern.
“It’s fine.”
“Let me–”
“You’ll only make it worse.”
“You treat your family like this?”
“Did you shoot yours?”
“Come on,” she said, and wrapped her arm around him. He clung to her with his good hand. He leaned hard on. She realized, with a stabbing pain of horror-stricken desire, that she wanted to spend the night with her hands on more of him. Not the fucking Chenjan, she thought.
“Surprised you jumped in after me,” he said.
“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Regret it yet?”
“Yes.”
Nyx heard the heavy sound of someone battering at the front door. “Time to go,” she said, loud. Not for the security women or the order keepers, but for Anneke.
“Who’s out there?” Rhys asked.
“Order keepers,” Nyx said. “Taite triggered the house alarm for this residence remotely. Whole district’s order keepers are about to descend us.”
A ceramic ventilation grate on the far wall shattered inward. Anneke poked her head out. “Hurry the fuck up,” she said. “It was tight in there.”
“What happened?” Nyx asked. “No assist?”
“You said I don’t move until the alarm,” Anneke said. “I waited for the order keepers. I count forty outside. Need to move.”
Nyx pulled herself away from Rhys and motioned him forward.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Anneke was in on this? I thought we were bait? I thought you threw us both out front just to get caught?”
Nyx grimaced. “No. You were the bait, Rhys.”
“We were going to trip the alarm,” Anneke said, “and have the order keepers pick you
up, then slip in during the confusion while they processed you.”
“That’s… a horrible plan,” Rhys said. He met Nyx’s look a long moment, and she knew
that no matter how drunk she got him, he wasn’t going to sleep with her.
“You’re as bad as they say.”
“If that was true, I’d have let you die.” She heard footsteps in the hall. “Go.”
“You first,” he said. “I don’t want you at my back.”
“Fair enough,” Nyx said, and crawled after Anneke.
#
“I’m sorry, mistress,” the ticket vendor said, “your identification papers are invalid.”
Meiret took the papers back, clutching them to her chest. Nyx watched her from a bench in the train station, yawning. Evening prayer had come and gone, and the station was busy with people on the move after end-of-week prayers. It had been a long day. She still had water stuck in her left ear. She could hear it sloshing around. She yawned again, then stood.
She came up behind Meiret and put her arm around her. Meiret froze.
“Hello, honey pot,” Nyx said, guiding her away from the ticket counter. “You and I need to have a little chat.”
“It isn’t what you think,” Meiret said.
Nyx kept her voice low. “I have a sniper up in the second level there,” she said, nodding to where Anneke was posted on the far side of the station. “And a magician over there.” She smiled at where Rhys waited near the train platform. “And to make this even cozier, I’ve got a com tech recording this entire conversation for posterity.” She tapped her ear.
“I don’t have the information.”
“Then I’m afraid you’re not ever leaving this country,” Nyx said.
Meiret gritted her teeth. “This is very serious organic science,” she said. “I need this. My people need this.”
“What, to make some kind of super regenerating soldier?”
Meiret shook her head. “That’s unstable. It’s the sex reassignment. Mhoria is a divided nation, Nyx. An agent with the ability to pass across the divide between the male and female spheres of our society–”
“Wait, what? You want to use it to spy on your own people?”
“I don’t expect you to understand Mhorian society. It’s necessary for the sexes to be separated, as God ordained.”
“So you’re a government agent for the women’s side? You spy on your own men?”
Meiret laughed. “You hunt down the men who flee from your war as if they’re feral dogs. You have no right to make judgments about Mhorian society.”
“I need what was in the safe, Meiret. You’re not leaving here with it.”
“I need…” Meiret’s eyes filled. “I need it. Please. You don’t understand how this will change things, for so many people.”
Nyx reached forward and gently took the carpet bag from Meiret’s hands. “Sewn into the liner?” Nyx said.
Meiret began to weep. “Please, if we don’t bring something back they’ll kill us. My mother and I. And if I stay, your government will kill me.”
“Did this act work on Jahar?”
Meiret’s crumpled face softened. She took her hands away from her face, and gave Nyx a hard look. “Damn you, and your foolish country,” she said.
“Let me guess – Mhoria didn’t want you experimenting on Mhorians, so they sent you here and you wormed your way into Harun’s cold little heart.”
“Jahar led me to Harun,” Meiret said. “My mother reassigned Jahar before the war, so he could be male and serve at the front for life with his brothers.”
“And when Harun rebuilt him, he started delivering more boys to you who wanted to be reassigned. Nice little organic science lab you had going here. Too bad it was all illegal.”
“They were all willing.”
“And you took advantage of that,” Nyx said. “Sorry, but changing people’s identities so they can avoid the draft is illegal, whether or not I agree with it.”
“It’s a crime to throw bodies into the maw of a war that will never end.”
“One your government happily supports by selling us bomb components,” Nyx said. “You and Tirhan and Ras Tieg and the rest are just as culpable. You know the war keeps Nasheen and Chenja busy, so you can consolidate your own power.”
“Politics is difficult,” Meiret said.
“So is prison,” Nyx said.
Almira stepped away from the crowd and took Meiret by the elbow with her clawed hand.
Meiret’s eyes widened. “Who…?”
“Guess who handles foreign espionage in Nasheen?” Nyx asked.
“Bel dames,” Almira said.
Two more bel dames peeled away from the crowd, and took hold of Meiret.
“This won’t stand!” Meiret cried. “The Mhorian ambassador will be notified. This won’t stand!”
They hauled her away.
Almira smiled at Nyx. “Thank you, Nyx.”
“Just don’t be some cat bitch about it.”
“Such language.”
Nyx handed her the carpet bag. “I hope you’re running this for the government and not for some big bidder.”
“D
on’t insult me. I’m true to my vows, Nyx. This information won’t leave Nasheen. The Queen herself put Dahab and me on this note.”
“I knew it wasn’t a fucking random assignment.”
The Body Project Page 5