by Lucy Smoke
The images that circle in my head aren't pretty. I had avoided anything having to do with sex and getting pregnant for a long time. The idea of getting pregnant and having a kid on Tartarus was horrifying and the only sexual partner I had ever had... well, it didn't matter because I wouldn't get pregnant. I was resolved of that.
"Please, go on," Thayer urges.
"I worked with my dad and my brother for a long time. Just doing odd jobs here and there. We never really had any money—not that anyone here ever does. Looking back though, I honestly wonder how it was that we ever managed to stay in one place."
"How did you end up in the detention center?"
I stiffen, and his hand tightens on mine until I relax. I take a breath and let out a sigh. "I ran away pretty early on in my teens," I admit. "When I started getting boobs, my dad expected... well, it doesn't matter. But I wasn't going to stick around. So, I hit the streets. I was there for a good year or two before an enforcer picked me up for something or other. Probably pickpocketing or something. I don't remember. I was a pretty rotten kid." A strained smile takes my face, but I drop it when I remember he can't see it.
"I was at the detention center for around six months. Got in a lot of fights. The guy running it all was a dick. Wouldn't give us food if we were bad, which might have made sense except it was really easy to be bad. Accidentally break a plate? No dinner. Didn't do all of your chores by nightfall, no dinner or breakfast the next day. They tried to put us in classes—first schooling I had ever experienced and let me tell you, it was not all it's cracked up to be. But at least I learned how to read."
"You learned how to read in six months?" Thayer's tone suggested shock.
I shrug. "The teacher said I had some sort of photographic memory or something. I pick up things easily and remember them when they're written down or I can see them visually. Anyway, when I met Kida, I got out."
"She just took you away?"
"I think..." Kida's face pops up in my mind as if she were standing right next to me. Her eyes, the perfect shade of tarnished gold. Her pale pink lips a contrast against even whiter skin. Dark hair pulled back in a perpetual ponytail that she refused to let down. I even miss her old leather jacket. Usually she left it when she went away for extended errands. When I realized she would be gone longer than a few days, I had hunted for that damn thing just so I could sleep with it. My chest aches with missing her.
"You think?" Thayer prompts, shaking me from my thoughts.
"I think she knew that I was suffocating there," I reply. "I'm not much better here on Tartarus, but the sky village was a lot smaller, and I was watched like a hawk. I think she knew that if I didn't leave soon, I'd do something dangerous just to escape."
We don't speak for a long time. Our hands touching, holding, but he doesn't say anything more until we reach a new drain. When his hand lets go of mine, I have to keep myself from reaching for it again.
"We can climb out here," he says. "I'll give you a boost. You'll have to slide the drain cover over."
Thayer bends down on one knee and clasps his hands together for me to step on. I waver on his hands for a second before he sighs and lets me down.
"What are you—oh my god!"
Thayer turns and bends down, shoving his head between my legs before standing abruptly until I'm clutching his head for support. "You can reach better like this and it's more stable," he offers.
I glare down at his head and tug a few of his curls in retribution before reaching up and sliding the drain cover over enough that I can peek out.
"It's clear," I say. Almost before I'm done green lighting our exit, his big palms grip my thighs and lift me up until I'm already halfway out. I scramble and clutch at the ground until I drag myself out.
I turn, prepared to offer him a hand, when I hear a faded thump and his palms appear over the rim of the drain. Grasping the edges as his shoulders and biceps bulge beneath the thin material of his shirt, Thayer leverages himself up and out of the drain by himself and I'm left, sitting there, gasping and gaping.
He catches me staring. "What?" Thayer looks down worriedly as I start shaking my head. "Did I tear my shirt?" he asks. I shake my head. "Then why are you staring?"
I shake my head again. "It's too fucking much," I mumble as I stand and start to brush off my clothes.
"What's too fucking much?" Thayer asks as he does the same.
I glare at him before gesturing at his general person. He looks down at his torso before looking back up in confusion. When a blush heats my face, searing across my cheeks, dawning realization echoes across his expression and a wicked grin spreads over his lips.
"Do you want to see the rest?" he offers, hands going to the bottom of his shirt.
"N-no thank you!" I snap, spinning to face away from him. "I think that's enough."
"I'm just teasing." He laughs. "But I bet if you take a picture with that photographic memory of yours, you could draw me later."
"I'm no artist. I'm sure you'd end up looking like a Picasso or a Malevich." I almost curse myself when I realize what I've just said and the silence behind me.
"I thought you didn't go to school until you went to that detention center," Thayer says. His hands grip my shoulders, turning me around to face him.
My cheeks remain bright red. "I didn't."
"Then how do you know about artists like–"
"Because I read everything," I blurt. "As soon as someone taught me how to read, I read every damn book they had. Every physical copy they had and every electronic anything—I read the fucking pamphlets they passed out to newcomers and visitors as soon as I could read. As soon as I knew how, I read like I wasn't ever going to get the chance again."
"Because you didn't think you would," Thayer's voice echoes in the empty alleyway.
In the distance, I can hear people talking and walking on the streets. Their feet scuff the pathways, their voices getting louder and lower with the change in their distance from us.
"Tell me something, Cass, if Kida hadn't found you at that detention center, what would you have done to escape?" I close my eyes, breathing deep. "Cass!" Thayer shakes me until I open my eyes and look at him. His face is so close. His breath falls on my cheek. "What would you have done?" he demands.
"Anything," I say. I stare up at him angrily, feeling vulnerable and hating the way my insides tremble. "I would have done anything. Fucked anyone, killed anyone—yes, even myself. I hated that place. You don't know what it was like there."
I had seen the way the director looked at the girls that lived there—the way he had looked at me. I would have rather lived with my brother and father again than ever go back to the detention center. The light touches, the expectations of more if we didn't do as we were told. I shudder and despite the warm day, I feel chilled.
With my family, I knew the score. They were mean, but at least they were honest. The people at the detention center had been utter angels around visitors, around visiting families and supervisors from other centers and government offices. As soon as the lights were out, and everyone was gone, though, the quiet crying in other girls' rooms echoed throughout the hallways. I despised my own cowardice, furious rage burning under my skin. There had been nights when my anger had overtaken that fearful part of me and I had pulled and screamed on the other side of my door. The one time I had managed to get out, despite the locking mechanisms on the doors, I had been sent to the isolation room for two days straight.
It was after that when I realized that no one there actually gave a fuck about the kids. They weren't trying to reform us or rehabilitate juvenile delinquents, they were just holding us there and playing with us until our sentence was over. After that, I knew I had to get out.
Thayer clenches his jaw as I twist away from him. "Do you have any other friends aside from Kida?" he asks. "Anyone we can go to now?"
"No." I rub my arms and head for the mouth of the alleyway.
He follows close behind. "There's no one else?" he insists.
"I don't even know if my dad or my brother are alive," I say. "Kida and I have been together for the last three years. We live together, we work relatively the same schedules. I don't trust anyone else."
He's quiet as we find a crowded street and slip into the foot traffic. It seems the quiet, stoic Thayer has made a reappearance and Charming has slipped by the wayside as he chews on his own thoughts. I don't understand what the interest in other friends might be, but I know it can't be anything good.
"I think my pod is around here," I say sometime later, picking up on familiar surroundings. "Can we stop by so I can pick up a few things?"
At his nod, I lead him on a zigzagging pathway through people, hovercars, and more alleyways. Several minutes later, we arrive at the front of my building. The glass doors are smudged and dirty and when I push on one, the door comes off the track. I sigh, leaving it for someone else to fix, and head straight for the stairwell behind the elevator entrance.
"Cass?" Thayer prompts as we begin to ascend.
"Yeah?"
"I don't think you're going to want to hear this, but..." I stop on the stairs and turn to look down at him. His dark curls are arranged in a halo around his head. He tilts his chin to the side and the shadow of beard growth there looks darker in the dim lighting of the building. "I don't think you and Kida... what I mean to say is, when we find Kida, I think it would be better if you moved in with us."
"Us?" There's only one "us" he can mean and that's the guys.
My brain stutters as it tries to understand why. It can't seem to find a logical conclusion, so I ask. "Because I think it would better for you in the long run," he says.
"How?"
Thayer grimaces and finally stops avoiding my eyes. Twin pools of darkness zero in on me. "I think you need to have more friends in your life, Firecracker. You need people to rely on. You need a fallback."
"I have a fallback," I reply. "Kida's always there for me."
He bites his bottom lip, teeth dragging across the pink flesh. "Where is she now?"
I react as if I've been slapped, blinking in shock. "Th-this is different," I stutter. "She's in trouble."
"And if we weren't there to help her, where would you be?"
"Out there, looking for her, trying to help her as I have been." I frown and take another step up the stairs, pulling away. He follows. "Where are you going with this, Thayer?"
"It doesn't seem wrong to you that you have a singular relationship with Kida and no one else?" He asks. "Who else besides Kida do you have? You just admitted that you have no one."
"She's my best friend." I frown at him, irritation curling my lips downward. "She's sacrificed a lot to get me back on Tartarus. She almost lost her job as a messenger. When we got back, she taught me how to do what she does! She gave me clothes, a home, friendship, love! She's been there for me a hell of a lot more than anyone else in my life! When I was down, and no one gave a shit whether I lived or died, she did!" My yells echo around us, getting louder the angrier I get.
"You don't know her or what she's been through. She lost her parents and imagine her fucking horror when she got shipped from the sky village she's always known to fucking Tartarus to be raised by a governor of all people! I know Vincent may seem like he cares about Kida now that she's missing, but don't think that her childhood was easy. She knows what it's like to lose people, to trust the wrong ones, and to be left behind!"
"Cass." Thayer leans forward, brushing my arm.
"No!" I snap, yanking away.
"Cass, listen to me." He steps forward and re-grips my arm holding me in place. "I'm not saying she's a bad person. She's obviously important to you."
"Then what are you saying?" I demand. "Because that's what it sounds like to me. It sounds like you're making her out to be something she's not, like she's someone who's kept me isolated when she hasn't. Hasn't it occurred to you that I'm just tired? I'm so fucking tired of people because they all want something from me and she doesn't."
"No, Cass. I'm sorry I made you feel that way. It just scares me." He closes his eyes and bends down to press his forehead to the top of mine. "You're really strong and you have a fucking mind like I've never seen before. You've come from a bad place and it just feels like you're looking for Kida not because she's your friend but because you don't know how to be without her. What if when we find her, it's not... she's not... Cass, I don't want to get your hopes up. There's a lot of shit going on with the Tanks and then with what the Architect told us, we don't know if..."
"We can't stop looking for her," I say.
He nods his forehead against mine. "We won't, but there's no guarantee, Firecracker."
"I know that."
His eyes open, brimming with sympathy and understanding. I realize that stoic Thayer is really just a mask. It doesn't mean his playfulness or his real personality is gone. Stoic Thayer is a layer he covers himself in when he doesn't know how to act. A lot of people use it; I don't know why I didn't see it before.
"I'm sorry I yelled at you," I say.
He smiles, brushing his lips against the top of my head and I know he's forgiven me... “Let's grab your shit and meet the guys back at the pod. I'm hungry."
"I'm not cooking," I say, drawing a laugh from him as he slings his arm over my shoulders and we head up to my third-floor pod.
We reach the door and when I punch in my personal code, it reads an error. I punch it in again and another error pops up on the keypad screen. Thayer shuffles me aside and bends down, running his fingers over the screen.
"You sure this is your pod?" he asks.
"Yeah," I say, confused.
He looks at me with a grin that doesn't reach his eyes. "Good," he says. "Don't call Enforcement on me."
"What do you–"
Thayer lifts his fist and slams it down on the top of the key code screen casing. The case shudders and falls to the floor, revealing a mass of wires and blinking lights. I watch with fascination as he pulls a knife from his boot and cuts a few wires.
"Do you have an old hook bolt at the top?" he asks. I shake my head in a negative. Seconds later, a beeping noise from the ruined mass of wires emits into the hallway and the door clicks open.
"Holy..." I gape at the overturned couch and glass fragments littering the floor of the living area. Thayer frowns and steps over a collapsed metal shelving unit that looks like someone took a sledgehammer to it. From the way the dents are shaped, the sledgehammer was someone's very angry fist.
I wander one way as if entering someone else's pod while Thayer remains in the front room. Trailing into the bedroom to the side, clothes are spilled out across the floor and the dresser that used to sit propped against the front wall is on its side next to my mattress. Everything even remotely fragile is smashed to bits.
Bending over and picking up a picture frame, I slip the picture of Kida and I that we had taken a month after moving in together from its case. I fold it up and slide it into my pocket. Though I know I need clothes and other necessities, I can't bring myself to touch anything else unless it's to move it out of my way as I pick through the remains of my home.
Thayer appears in the bedroom doorway his face a stony mask of anger and concern. "We have to go," he says.
"What about–"
He cuts me off with a shake of his head, grabs my arm, and begins towing me back to the front door at a fast gait. Once we're out of the building and on the sidewalk, he slows down only marginally.
"Who would do that?" I ask. He doesn't answer, but the way his face hardens at my question tells me he has an idea.
When he pauses next to a decrepit, old hovercar parked on one of the back streets with its frame propped up on metal blocks as if someone had been in the midst of repairing the old creature, Thayer instructs me to be on the lookout for enforcers or anyone who looks suspicious as he gets on his back and slips under the hood. I bite my lip, but back myself against a nearby wall, trying to look inconspicuous with my arms folded across my che
st. After several minutes and a loud banging noise, Thayer jerks himself out from under the hovercar and opens the side door.
"Get in." I lower myself into the unfamiliar vehicle and he shuts the door behind me.
"Where are we going?" I ask as he slams the door closed behind him and leans forward to press a button that lifts the steering wheel.
Thayer grunts as he turns his head to the side, facing me. He reaches under the dash, pulling at the plugs and wires there. I watch and wonder just what kind of person can so easily manipulate all kinds of machinery—hovercars, key code boxes. He doesn't say anything else as the hovercar blinks to life, its dash lighting up. He twists the steering wheel and the hovercar groans slightly as it levitates off the metal boxes and turns onto the empty street. I have the worst feeling that something has changed, but I don’t know what.
Seven
Information is Key
Haze's face has a darkening bruise running down the side of his cheek and several more spreading across his arms like splotches of dark halos. He groans as he collapses into a chair with a frozen water bag pressed to his face.
"So, what do we know?" Noaz demands.
"We know that the tech thief was a bust and Haze got the shit beat out of him," Levi offers helpfully from his place on the couch.
Noaz shakes his head and begins to pace. I scoot closer to the middle of the couch as Thayer strides in from the kitchen and sits to my left.
"The tech thief wasn't a bust, he just didn't know more than we do." Noaz stops and points to Aaron. "Make sure we keep a lookout on him." His arm drops as he resumes his pacing.
I keep my eyes locked on Noaz. Though I would much rather be up there with him, pacing a hole in the floor, I know it won't help us solve our growing list of problems. Propping my elbows on my knees, I let my chin rest on my hands and Noaz makes another pass in front of me.