by Jenna Black
“I want to reassure our customers that there are no known issues with our backup storage or scanners. We will continue to process scans and to store backup data, but we will not create another Replica until we are certain we understand what went wrong with the Replica of Nathaniel Hayes. Safety must always be our first priority.”
Dorothy sounded firm and confident, and her gaze as she stared into the cameras before her was regal. She looked every bit like a Chairman, in control of her state and with a bright future ahead of her. But though she had successfully seized the Chairmanship, her own Replica program had backed her into a corner. As long as she continued to claim it was on hiatus, Paxco’s stock crisis would continue to worsen. But the moment she admitted it was up and running, people would expect her to create a Replica of Chairman Hayes and put him back in power. If she didn’t—if she, for example, claimed that the Chairman’s backup data was damaged—people couldn’t help but begin to suspect her of foul play.
“Our state is strong and resilient,” Dorothy said, holding her chin at just the right angle to communicate pride. “There will likely be some dark times ahead. We may be forced to introduce certain austerity measures to preserve and protect our economy.” Her voice rose, filling with power and purpose. “But we will not allow these troubles to defeat us. We will show the world how resilient the people of Paxco can be! We will overcome all obstacles, and we will be great again!” She pumped a fist to emphasize her point, and everyone in the room burst into applause.
Nadia had never heard applause like that at a press conference before, but she thought it had been started by a handful of board members who were standing in the background behind Dorothy. They were cheering loudly and enthusiastically, and their excitement seemed to be contagious. Nadia had the cynical suspicion that Dorothy and those board members had choreographed the scene in advance, trying to make the news sound exciting and promising when in fact Dorothy was telling people things were going to suck for a while.
The image went still and was reduced to a small box in the upper right corner of the screen while a serious-faced reporter behind a desk looked into the camera and said, “That was the scene earlier at Paxco Headquarters.” No doubt he would soon begin an ad nauseam analysis of everything Dorothy had just said. The picture from the press conference/pep rally remained in the upper part of the screen, Dorothy’s triumphant smile immortalized. Fearing she might throw something at the TV if the reporter started rhapsodizing about Dorothy’s speech, Nadia turned the sound off once more.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Nadia wasn’t entirely sure what she’d expected of her time hiding in the Basement, but it wasn’t boredom. Shrimp informed everyone in no uncertain terms that they were not to set foot outside the building until they’d been introduced to Maiden and received his approval, but Maiden was clearly in no hurry to talk to them. He was supposedly planning to invite them to dinner at his place, but as the days passed one by one and no dinner invitation was forthcoming, Nadia began to feel more like a prisoner than a paying “guest.” The boys were having an even harder time, thanks to Dante feeling like a third wheel and thanks to his and Nate’s mutual dislike. They generally came up to Shrimp’s apartment shortly after sunset each night, though sometimes Nate and Bishop appeared noticeably later.
At least it was a comfortable captivity. Maiden might not have extended an invitation to dinner, but Shrimp did so every night. And, although it was a skill Nadia never would have expected from the brother of a notorious Basement gang lord, cooking was apparently one of Shrimp’s favorite hobbies. Every evening, Nadia and Agnes would awaken to an array of mouth-watering scents wafting from the kitchen. Nadia let Agnes have dibs on the shower, and invariably when Nadia was all dressed and ready, she’d enter the living room to find Agnes had joined Shrimp in the kitchen. She wasn’t just being social, either—it appeared Shrimp was teaching her how to cook, and that she was having fun.
Nadia enjoyed the nice meals as much as her friends, but she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of guilt. Shrimp always had the best ingredients—no doubt thanks to the thriving black market trade the Red Death engaged in—but she couldn’t help remembering the sights and sounds and smells of the Basement streets when he’d guided them to this building. He and the other Red Death bigwigs had a comfortable home and high-end food and extravagances like the huge TV, while their less powerful fellows lived in squalor and sold themselves body and soul to survive—and were no doubt forced to give a high percentage of their hard-earned money to Maiden’s enforcers.
Every night after dinner, Shrimp would head out to conduct Red Death “business.” No one asked him what that business might be, probably because no one really wanted to know. They would then have to face a long night in their apartments with nothing to do except talk or watch TV. Talking almost invariably led to bickering—they had all spent way too much time in each other’s company—so usually they watched TV instead.
As depressing as it was, Nadia couldn’t help checking the news every night. She hoped against hope to hear that her parents had been released, but of course Dorothy had no intention of letting them go, or she wouldn’t have had them arrested in the first place.
Phone service was not restored, and Dorothy’s press secretary informed the public that it had been cut off in an effort to quell unrest within the Basement. Nadia wasn’t sure how cutting off phone service was supposed to quell unrest, but then obviously Dorothy didn’t have much regard for the truth. After all, any unrest that might be occurring had happened after phone service had been cut off, not before.
The decline in Paxco’s stock had slowed, but not stopped, and by the weekend, Dorothy held yet another press conference.
“Thanks to the generous support of investors and foreign allies, I am happy to announce that we have begun the process of rebuilding the Paxco economy,” she said, smiling at the cameras. This time, she was wearing a conservative navy blue suit and had added a pair of glasses she surely didn’t need. For someone who wasn’t really a human being and hadn’t had to choose outfits until recently, she was doing a good job of building up an aura of authority and competence. “However, our state will not be restored to its former glory overnight, and we must do all we can to hurry that restoration along. To that end, certain nonessential services to the Basement will be temporarily halted.”
Since the government provided only food, shelter, power, and rudimentary health care to its poorest citizens, Nadia wondered what those “nonessential services” might be.
“Let me assure the working people of Paxco that these austerity measures will not affect you. You are the backbone of our society, and together, we will weather this storm and come out the other end stronger for it.”
“If you’ve made so much progress,” Nadia muttered at the TV, “then why is there a storm still to be weathered?”
But if any of the reporters at the press conference thought to question Dorothy’s assertions, those questions and answers didn’t make the news. And it soon became apparent that Dorothy considered the stupid blimps “essential,” because there was always one or two of them hovering over the Basement at night, blaring out messages.
Power outages were becoming annoyingly common. Usually they lasted only a few minutes, and Nadia wondered if Dorothy was actively ordering the outages to save money, or whether she was saving money by willfully neglecting maintenance issues. One thing she was certain of: the outages were Dorothy’s doing, not random acts of nature. And they were happening only in the Basement, not in the “respectable” parts of the city.
The news never spent much time covering anything that happened in the Basement, and they probably wouldn’t have even mentioned the phone service if it weren’t for the fact that Executives were being inconvenienced by their inability to call their black market contacts. Anything Nadia learned about the doings in the Basement came from the recaps Shrimp delivered every morning when he returned from his outings.
The news Shrimp had t
o share was as ominous as what they heard on the TV. Predictably, Basement-dwellers were starting to get cranky about the phone and power outages. Tempers were running short, and more than one Employee or Executive tourist had found out the hard way that despite the money they spent in the Basement, they weren’t well liked there.
“There hasn’t been anything serious,” Shrimp said. “Bumps and bruises, is all. But security is getting uptight about it. They’ve beefed up those checkpoints around the border. Enough to scare off customers. Even Angel’s is half empty these days, and cuttin’ off the money ain’t gonna go over too well, if you know what I mean.”
If Dorothy was hoping to provoke rioting in the Basement, then she was on the right track. Someday, probably in the near future, some Employee or Executive was going to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people and was going to get killed. And that would give Dorothy just the excuse she needed to take even more drastic measures.
* * *
One week after arriving in Red Death territory, Nadia arose in the evening to find that Shrimp wasn’t bustling around the kitchen as usual, and Agnes said he hadn’t been around when she’d emerged from the shower earlier. His absence made both of them vaguely uneasy, and when the boys joined them at the time when Shrimp ordinarily served dinner, he still wasn’t around.
Shrimp showed up before they had a chance to imagine too many worst-case scenarios, arriving at the apartment with three garment bags draped over his arm.
“Maiden wants to see you,” he announced.
“So you keep telling us,” Nate said irritably. “It’s not like we’re hard to find.”
Bishop shot him a warning look, but Shrimp was a hard man to annoy—which was a good thing, considering the state of everyone’s temper after the long period of inactivity.
“For real this time,” Shrimp assured them. “Dinner at his place tonight, eight o’clock. Just the Execs, though,” he said with an apologetic shrug toward Bishop and Dante.
Nate shot up from the sofa he’d been sitting on beside Bishop, a belligerent scowl on his face. “No way. We all go, or nobody goes.” Of all of them, Nate seemed to be struggling most with their maddening captivity.
Shrimp met the scowl with one of his own. “Bishop, put a leash on your boy before he gets himself in trouble.”
Apparently, it wasn’t that hard to annoy Shrimp after all. Not for Nate, at least.
Bishop grabbed Nate’s arm and yanked him back down to the sofa so abruptly Nate let out a little grunt of surprise.
“If Maiden says Dante and me stay here, we stay here,” Bishop said in response to Nate’s shocked expression. “And you need to think over anything you want to say at least three times before word one leaves your mouth tonight. You do not want to piss him off.”
Maybe having Nate and Maiden in the same room was a bad idea, though Nadia didn’t suppose they had any choice in the matter. Nate had never been any good at guarding his words. To be fair, he’d never had to be, never been as vulnerable as someone like Nadia, who didn’t have the cloak of near invincibility that came with being the Chairman Heir.
But Nate wasn’t the Chairman Heir anymore, was no longer anywhere near the top of the food chain, and he couldn’t afford to let his mouth get away from him.
Nate nodded his acceptance of Bishop’s warning while still managing to look mutinous. If Maiden were to act deliberately provoking, Nadia had no idea if Nate would be able to control his temper. Bishop leaned over and whispered something in Nate’s ear that coaxed a reluctant smile out of Nate—and made him blush to the roots of his hair. Nadia was perfectly happy not to know what Bishop had said.
“Good decision,” Shrimp said, but there was still an unaccustomed tension in his shoulders. Bishop had said Shrimp was the one person who wasn’t afraid of Maiden, but Nadia wondered if that was wholly true. Or maybe he was just worried that Nate would run his mouth at dinner and someone would get hurt.
“Will you be coming with us?” Nadia asked Shrimp. She doubted he could or would help them if they got into trouble with his brother, but she had a feeling things would go more smoothly if they had a Basement ally with them to help keep things on an even keel.
“I’ll be there,” he confirmed. He brushed at his orange hair, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “And, uh, I brought you some stuff to wear. Maiden likes his dinner guests to dress up. I know shit about sizes, so I had to guess.”
Nadia shared a grimace with Agnes. They’d both gotten used to wearing Shrimp’s roomy, comfortable castoffs, and changing into elaborate Basement regalia held no appeal. Not that Nadia had any intention of defying Maiden’s wishes when he held her life and the lives of all her friends in his hands.
Shrimp distributed the three garment bags, and Nadia and Agnes returned to their bedroom to change, both expecting the worst. Basement outfits were not the kind of thing you ordinarily carried around in garment bags, so Nadia had no idea what they would find when they opened those zippers.
“How bad can it be?” Agnes asked with a little smile, then dropped her garment bag on the bed and yanked down the zipper. She was clearly braced to see something hideously flamboyant, and her mouth dropped open in shock when the opening revealed a length of scarlet silk chiffon.
Nadia crept closer as Agnes reached in and pulled out a padded hanger, carefully extracting the silk from the bag and revealing a knee-length cocktail dress with a beaded bodice and short, fluttery sleeves. The skirt was a layer of diaphanous chiffon over a closely fit sheath with a slit that reached to mid-thigh.
It was not at all something Agnes would usually wear, based on Nadia’s admittedly limited experience with the girl. Agnes tended to favor muted pastel colors or basic black, with skirts or pants that were very loosely fitted, most likely in an attempt to camouflage her bottom-heavy figure. She probably couldn’t have picked a more unflattering wardrobe if she’d tried. But the dress she was still holding up and gaping at was exactly the kind of thing Nadia would have chosen for her.
“Well,” Nadia said, “that’s a step up from what I was expecting.”
Agnes let out a little huff of laughter. “More like several staircases up.” She shook her head. “But I think Shrimp must have mixed up the bags. He must have meant this one for you. You’d look so beautiful in it!”
No, she wouldn’t, Nadia knew. The red was far too bright for her pale complexion and blond hair, and she wasn’t curvy enough to do the fitted skirt justice. Shrimp had known exactly what he was doing when he picked the dress for Agnes.
Agnes tried to hold the hanger out to her, but Nadia pretended not to notice as she unzipped her own bag.
Nadia’s dress was lovely, but nowhere near as striking as Agnes’s. It was the kind of dress a woman wore when she wanted to disappear into the sea of little black dresses at a cocktail party, although the panels of deep red lace around the edges of the flaring hem added a spot of color and interest. Nadia had to suppress a smile as she realized that Shrimp had chosen the perfect showstopper for Agnes while picking something much more ordinary for Nadia. The two of them did seem to be getting along awfully well as Agnes grew more proficient in the kitchen and Shrimp trusted her with more challenging tasks.
“That one must be meant for me,” Agnes said, looking at the black dress longingly.
Nadia smiled at her. “I don’t think so.”
“But I can’t wear this!” Agnes wailed, eyes wide.
“You’re freaking out over a red cocktail dress after walking around the Basement wearing nothing but a bodysuit and boots?”
Agnes’s face turned a shade of red that was a nice match for her dress. “But that outfit was practically invisible out there,” she protested, waving a hand in the direction of the window. “No one gave me a second look.” She swallowed hard and tried again to hand her dress to Nadia. “I’m sure this was meant for you.”
Despite their differences in body type, Nadia suspected she could fit into Agnes’s dress and vice versa,
but there might be one way she could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the red dress was meant for Agnes.
Laying her own dress down on the bed, Nadia reached into the garment bag once again and felt around the bottom. Sure enough, the outfit came with shoes. A pair of black velvet pumps that fit Nadia’s small feet perfectly.
With a groan, Agnes pulled out the shoes that came with the red dress and found a pair of strappy red heels that were two sizes larger than the ones Nadia had on.
Nadia grinned at her. “The shoes fit, Cinderella.”
“I could wear these shoes with that dress,” Agnes said, staring longingly at the black.
Nadia shook her head. “The lace panels would clash. And I suspect Shrimp would be insulted. I’m afraid you’re stuck being stunning tonight.”
Agnes gave her a dirty look. “Maybe it won’t fit,” she said hopefully, but they both knew it would.
“Who’d have thought we’d have to wear cocktail dresses to have dinner with a gang lord?” Nadia said as she took her dress off the hanger and started to change. She had a feeling it was time to set aside all her preconceived notions of what a gang lord would be like. Except for the part about him being dangerous. That he couldn’t change with a hundred beautiful dresses or fancy manners—assuming he had the latter, which considering the dresses seemed like a good bet. A wolf in sheep’s clothing was still a wolf.
CHAPTER NINE
Tonight was far from the first time Nate had had another guy choose his outfit for him—he’d had a valet for as long as he could remember—but he’d never been dressed in borrowed clothes before, and so far, he was not enjoying the experience. The charcoal gray suit Shrimp had provided was expensive and well cut, but its shoulders were too broad for him, and the sleeves came all the way down over the ball of his thumbs. The thing would probably fit Dante’s muscular form just right, but Nate felt like a skinny kid wearing his father’s clothes. At least the pants fit better, though he had to cinch the belt tight to hold them up.