by Alex Wells
“Now, if you don’t want this to happen again,” the short guard said conversationally, “you play nice with the Weatherman. And the next time we come to pick you up, you offer us your wrists so we can cuff you properly.” He tilted the box at her again. “Or I can stun you again. Don’t care. You can think it over.”
They dumped her in the white room again, hard enough that her head bounced against the floor. Pained stars danced in front of her eyes, and she couldn’t do more than make vague, ineffective swimming motions with her arms as the monster – the Weatherman – walked over to her. His legs folded in a strange way as he knelt, too smooth, too wrong.
“Hello again,” he crooned, taking up her hand. Beneath his finger, one of the scars opened, smooth as if he’d taken a razor to it, but there was no pain. He leaned over as the blood welled again, his eyes gone to black holes. “Something’s not quite right,” he murmured.
She tried to tug her hand away and he simply set it down on the floor and pressed his knee over her wrist. Then he ran his finger over his own palm – it seemed wrong, somehow, that his blood was the same color as hers, it should have been like tar – and reached to press their hands together.
“No!” she managed, a coherent sound at last, for all the good it did. Ice flowed up her veins, from her hand, inexorably toward her heart, her brain. She kicked weakly, hating herself, hating the guards, but hating the Weatherman most of all.
“I’m going to make you better,” the Weatherman said, giving her a wide, open smile. “Better than ever.”
* * *
Another two days – or what she assumed was that from the number of meals – the lower meal slot in the door opened only a short while after she’d already eaten. A woman whispered through it, “Hello?”
Mag crept forward until she could press her ear against the slot. “Hello back,” she whispered. The other woman’s voice sounded oddly familiar, though it was hard to tell when it was only a whisper. Probably her own desperate imagination.
“You’ve been good so far,” the woman whispered. “Don’t give up now. You’ve got friends, and we’re coming for you. Call for us when they next take you from your cell.”
Mag opened her mouth to ask what friends, what any of this meant, but the slot snapped shut. She went back to her corner, hugging her knees to her chest again as she mulled those few words over in her head. She had no idea what friends she might have, but they had to be better than the company men that had put her here.
* * *
The next time she was due for a meal, the door opened. A man in a company blue suit stood there, two Mariposa guards with him. The company man’s eyes were icy blue; his version of a friendly smile left her cold. “Miss Kushtrim, if you’ll come with us, please. The doctors have designed a procedure to remove your contamination. You’ll be free to go soon.”
Mag wanted to resist on principle, but she remembered what the strange woman had told her – and she remembered the stun box too. Eyes locked with the familiar, shorter guard, she offered her wrists out and waited.
“Good girl,” the guard said, as he wrapped a few thin strands of razor tanglewire around her wrists. Mag suppressed the urge to bite him.
Maybe it had been a company trick to make certain she’d go quietly. And, she admitted to herself, if something horrible was going to happen, better to go with dignity, on her own two feet. She’d have that small comfort, at least.
She stepped into the featureless hallway. Flanked by the guards, Mag followed the company man. As they turned a corner in the hallway, their footsteps crunched. That couldn’t be right. Everything was clean and smooth, even her cell had been every time she was thrown back into it. There’d never been so much as a speck of dirt in the hallway before.
“I’m here,” she whispered, not knowing who she might be calling to. She felt an answering tug, heard the far-off music that felt like someone shouting in her ear: now now now now NOW. It gave her the boldness to shout the next two words: “Help me!” She ducked away from the guards as they tried to grab her arms. Teeth bared, she aimed a clumsy kick at the shorter guard. By some miracle she connected, and the black stun box went flying.
The tiny grains of sand scattered across the hall ran together, like drops of water, around her, under her boot heels. Mag bit back a scream, her arms, still tied with the wire, whipping back and forth for balance as she skidded forward. The sand formed itself into a rust-red line across the floor, with her at its center.
An agonized crack like a gunshot echoed down the hall as the synthcrete broke open beneath her feet. A chasm yawned to swallow her whole.
Chapter Nine
It took four separate underground journeys to reach the outskirts of Newcastle. Coming up from the second, Hob threw up, then passed out. She woke with her head in the Bone Collector’s lap again, the shrill ringing of her ears driven back by the sound of his voice as he crooned something like a lullaby. She didn’t understand the words as federal trade standard, and couldn’t place them as any other language she knew: not spacer lingo nor street-cha nor miner’s Slovak.
After the third trip, she could stand on her own two feet, even before her senses had cleared.
And the fourth, she just kept her eyes shut tight and hummed to herself, the same tune she’d heard the Bone Collector singing, until she felt the pressure of sand and salt and rock go away. She opened her eyes to see mirrored buildings that reflected a sea of stars, gray synthcrete streets, train tracks snaking back and forth at all elevations like a shining lattice: Newcastle. She’d only ever been this close once before, the day the rift ship Phoenix had landed and she’d escaped onto the landing field, determined to make a name for herself somehow.
“We can’t come up any closer,” the Bone Collector said. “They’ve paved it quite thoroughly. But you can walk the rest of the way.”
“I think that’d be mighty nice, actually,” Hob said. She pulled off her trenchcoat and shoved it into the Bone Collector’s arms. She had more than enough layers on under it, shirt and vest and coat, and if she did happen to steal a motorcycle in the city, she could still survive without it.
“Give me your handkerchief.” The Bone Collector gave the disreputable piece of cloth she offered him a disapproving look, and then filled it with sand scooped from his pocket. He tied it securely and handed it back. “Be careful with it.”
“Don’t really want a pocket full of sand,” Hob commented
“And you recall what to do with it?”
“Yeah, whether it makes sense or no.” She shrugged. “Old Nick’s primed me good and proper to do shit that don’t make no sense.”
The Bone Collector laughed. “I will be waiting and listening.”
“Long as it works the way you say it will.”
“Trust in me.”
She felt like she should say something more to that, do something to interrupt the intent smile he offered her. That was precisely the reason she turned on her heel and started walking without another word.
Hob used the rest of the night to walk into the city, find an alley to hole up in while she planned her next move. Unlike the night-cold desert surrounding it, the roads and buildings radiated heat like an oven and left her sweating until she soaked her shirt through and into her black undertaker’s coat. The synthcrete streets felt strange beneath her feet; too smooth, too solid, and there was something else she couldn’t quantify, something that made her plain nervous. The surroundings made her feel like she’d stepped back into the belly of the rift ship that had brought her here, the Phoenix. Too much metal, too much glass, and display screens everywhere, showing strange, bright advertisements instead of cargo manifests and schedules. She spent five minutes nearly transfixed by an animated, dancing, bright pink potato that wanted her to check her car’s power cells, trying to figure out how in the hell anyone had even come up with something that bizarre. Maybe she had wandered back onto the rift ship, a decade too late, and it had let her off on a completely different planet. There was nothing
like this in the mining towns.
As the sun came up, people poured into the streets. Most were in company blue suits or Mariposa green, but there were a large enough number of ordinary people that Hob didn’t stick out like too much of a sore thumb. Someone had to run the restaurants, bars, and shops, she supposed. Someone had to gather the garbage and sweep the streets, and even those people looked fat compared to the miners.
Hob made her way through the streets to the TransRift tower, and there she waited, for an entire day. It made her grind her teeth, and her leg muscles twitched with the helpless need to go somewhere and be doing something, but she kept herself still and out of the way and simply watched. Watch, wait, find a way into the building that will give you the element of surprise – that’s what the Bone Collector had advised her.
She saw quickly that the employees had to swipe a card to get in, which meant she’d need more than just a uniform or a suit to enter the building. From there, she started watching for female employees that were close to her size and shape. It was no easy task; she was tall for a woman, and too thin from years of not really having enough to eat. At least the second problem she could fake with a little padding, but it was damn annoying all the same.
She found a likely candidate, a tall enough woman with her brown hair in a severe bun. The woman had a blue company suit on, a jacket and a skirt. As a bonus, she looked soft, a management type rather than the rougher sorts Hob was used to seeing out near the mines. She’d hopefully put up less of a fight, and there’d be less risk of her mussing her clothes in the struggle.
Hob stalked her like a dune wolf stalked lizards, following her as she went on her lunch break, always watching from a safe distance. She hunkered back down outside the building, ignoring the grumbling of her stomach – she wasn’t willing to abandon her post to search out something cheap to eat – and waited for the woman to go home.
Though of course, the woman didn’t head straight home from work. She went to get dinner, and drinks with her friends. She even went to a second bar, while Hob contemplated just taking her out in the bathroom so that she could have done with it and buy herself some damn food.
But patience. It was all about patience. It wasn’t as if this woman knew she had a date with destiny. Or more accurately, a date with Hob’s fist and the inside of her own closet.
She followed the now drunk woman onto a train – one different and much nicer than she’d ever been on herself, the ride smooth and quiet, the design inside all curving lines and polished metal, well-padded seats. Then she shadowed her to another tall building, hopefully full of apartments. The lobby was two stories tall, home to a long granite fountain that water just ran down endlessly, and lined with glass. That amount of water, just doing nothing, was enough to give Hob pause before she got her head back in the game. Vents along the lobby floor that made barely a whisper of sound gobbled up the few flecks of dust that floated off Hob’s black coat. The woman barely acknowledged her presence as Hob slid into the elevator right before the doors shut; she just stood, swaying gently as they went up and up. She stared at the floor, at the ceiling, chewing on a stick of gum, anywhere but at Hob. Though Hob caught a few little flicking sideways glances, a little smug tilt at the corner of her mouth that just made her blood boil up.
“Are you going to select your floor?” the woman asked, words slurred. “All you do is push the button.”
“We’re going to the same floor. Real coincidence, there. My lucky day, someone pushed the goddamn button for me.”
The woman laughed woodenly, then stared at the corner for the rest of the ride.
It made her angry, seeing how secure and safe that woman felt, in her little TransRift suit. Out in the mining towns, there might not have been too much crime that people talked about, but they constantly guarded their words, watched the security guards, wondered if today was when they’d end up dead in an accident or blacklisted for saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. They worried about if they’d be able to afford food, if they’d be able to afford new shoes, a thousand other things. And then this woman, looking at her like she was some kind of country moron, like she was surprised Hob even knew what a goddamn elevator was.
It wasn’t fair, Hob thought grimly. It wasn’t fair, even before she added Mag into the equation, a blameless person these sons of bitches had just kidnapped, like it was their right to do what they wanted with people already knuckled under by fear.
The woman didn’t even look back when Hob followed her from the elevator, just stumbled down the thickly carpeted hallway in her impractical shoes, humming to herself as she fumbled in her little purse. Hob stalked behind her silently, just a soft swish of her coat, then the sound of metal brushing leather as she drew her pistol.
The woman stopped at one of the doors, trying to bring key to lock with an unsteady hand. Hob flipped her pistol in her hand and covered the last few steps at a run, arm whipping up. The woman opened her mouth, wad of pale green gum visible on her tongue, and then Hob slammed the pistol butt against her temple.
She grabbed the woman as she fell, balancing her on one bony hip. Not because she particularly cared if the company woman hit the carpet; she just didn’t want the noise or the extra fight with gravity when it came time to pick her up. She scooped the keys off the floor one handed, and tried them until she found the one that opened the apartment door.
The apartment inside was almost bigger than Mag’s entire house, and far finer than anything Hob had ever seen. The pale gray carpet made her feel off balance, it was so thick. All the furniture was white synthetic leather, polished wood and glass. Hob took care of business first: she dragged the woman back into her walk-in closet – a whole room, just for clothes! – and tied her up with a selection of neckties and pantyhose, making sure none of her restraints were too tight. It wasn’t specifically this woman’s fault that Mag had gotten snatched by her employers, or that she owned more pairs of shoes than any entire family Hob had ever known. Maybe if she kept reminding herself of that, she’d believe it at some point.
She took a fresh suit from the closet – since the woman had more than one – and the woman’s purse, then shut the door securely. As drunk as the woman had been, Hob was hoping she’d just go from unconscious to stupor without making a pass at being awake.
Hob explored the apartment, ignoring most of the fancy technology that she’d never seen and didn’t know what to do with. She turned on the wall-mounted vidplate – she knew what that was, even if they didn’t get it out in the desert because transmissions couldn’t seem to make it through – and paged through channels until she found a news program. The announcers talked about the Federal Union of Systems, about trade agreements between colonies, and TransRift stock hitting the roof because of it, all in voices filled with carefully measured excitement. A lot of it didn’t make sense to Hob; she didn’t understand much about economics, and the names of most of the colonies were so much noise to her. The Federal Union didn’t ring many bells to her either – government, she knew, but a toothless one when it came to the only homes she’d ever known, the rift ships and Tanegawa’s World. Company policy and the supervisor’s word were the only laws in either place. Vaguely, she recalled police on other planets she’d been to before jumping ship, but they’d always just ignored her, and had acted very much like the security guards from Mariposa. There didn’t seem to be much of a difference.
She left the vid on for the novelty of it, accompanied by the background noise as she ransacked the woman’s kitchen. She made herself three thick sandwiches, drank half the beer in the fridge (some of it was pretty good), and took the only bottle of whiskey for later.
Belly finally quieted, she turned her attention to the woman’s ID card; it was a swipe card, but with a picture and name on it, fastened to a clip so it could hang off a jacket. The picture looked enough like her if she squinted, and she could probably make up the difference with a little use of the extensive collection of cosmetics she found in the
bathroom. She’d never been one for makeup, herself, but Mag had shown her the basics using the little set she’d bought with hoarded birthday money. She could fake it well enough, she thought. She doubted that the security guards would pay that much attention, anyway. The eyepatch, she’d just have to come up with a good story for, something juicy and distracting. Her name, she discovered, would now be “Mary Riley.”
Hob dozed a bit on the weirdly shaped sofa in front of the vid, and then woke up with the real Mary Riley kicking the closet door. She quieted nicely when Hob let her look down the barrel of her pistol. “Make noise again, and I’ll be shootin’ ya. Keep quiet until tomorrow, I’ll let ya live.”
Not another peep came from the closet, and Hob dozed off again until dawn turned the sky gray. One eye on the floor-to-ceiling windows, Hob pulled on the blue suit and grimaced all the while at how weird it felt, the fabric hugging curves she didn’t quite have. It firmed her opinion that her habit of dressing like Nick was the right one. The makeup was even more of a struggle, left her feeling like she was trying to paint a picture with no skill and a broom, but after three false starts and a lot of face scrubbing she managed something passable. Then to her dismay she discovered that Mary had goddamn tiny feet – or maybe Hob’s were just big – and nothing with a heel shorter than six centimeters, which seemed downright excessive considering how tall they both were already. She was bound to break her damn ankle, she was sure, or her toes. Maybe both. Her own clothes she folded up and stowed in a briefcase she found by the door, along with her small collection of weapons – throwing knives, combat knife, garrote, pistols – and the handkerchief full of sand. She even did her hair the same hairstyle as in the picture, an extremely tight bun, though it made her forehead feel stretched and her scalp scratchy.
It wasn’t just her head but her whole skin that felt itchy, ready to crawl off her body at a moment’s notice as she approached the tall building that stood at the heart of Newcastle, the main TransRift office tower. Fear turned her belly in slow circles, but she forced herself to keep her chin high and walk as comfortably as she could in Mary Riley’s too-small black pumps. It was all about attitude, that was what would get her through this; she had to act like she belonged and hope she didn’t run into any of Mary’s close friends.