Then the smell hits me. Human waste, rotting food, and dank, musty air. The small reservoir of courage I’ve been cultivating promptly vanishes.
“Welcome to hell.” One of the Tranqs sneers.
In my mind, the phrase Holding Cell conjures up something small and clean, sort of like my hospital room but without the comfy bed. A Holding Cell—somewhere I’d be held temporarily. This, however, is much, much different. The elevator doors have slid open onto a large platform above an enormous cage; it’s the size of several football fields. There must be over a thousand people in there. Through the rusty bars, I see beds made of scrap wood, an old lounge chair covered in stains, even a very old piece of scratch beaming up a flickery entertainment stream. Kids dressed in rags run through the adults’ legs, playing tag. This doesn’t look like a Holding Cell where people spend a few hours. It looks like the prisoners have been living here for years.
The Tranquils hustle me down a flight of metal stairs. People close to the bars start yelling at me.
“Hey, Newbie—”
“Pretty girl, my lucky day—”
“Newbie!”
“Oi! Oi! Oi!” A man covered in botched, tasteless tronics with a mouthful of what looks like animals’ teeth leers at me. “Got a boyfriend?”
My insides shudder and I set my gaze coldly, trying to hide my rising panic.
The Tranquils march me around the corner of the cell and into a small office, lit by a single overhead light that flickers. In here, the din from the huge cage is merely a muffle. A large woman with ebony skin, bucketloads of silver eye shadow, and a hot pink cardigan over her tight blue robes sits behind a desk. A sign marked REGISTRATION hangs above her. She is flicking aimlessly through a fashion stream and looks supremely bored. Two red-eyed Quicks stand silently on either side of the desk, like dark, evil knights.
A small wave of relief flutters through me—a woman, a regular person. I can’t reason with a Tranquil or a Quick. But I can reason with a person.
“Another one for you, Shanice,” one of the Tranquils says, finally uncuffing me. I rub my wrists in relief, rolling the sore muscles in my shoulders.
“Mmm-hmm,” she says, not taking her eyes off the stream.
The Tranquils turn and march out.
Silence. The woman doesn’t even acknowledge my presence.
“Hi,” I say gingerly. Nothing. No movement from her or the Quicks. “I’m not supposed to be here. Oh, I guess you hear that all the time, but—look, I need to comm my uncle right now. Dr. Abel F. Rockwood.”
Nothing. It’s like I’m not even here.
“It’s important. It’s actually a matter of life and death.” I raise my voice and take a step forward. “Are you listening to me? A company called Simutech has created something called Aevum. It’s an artilect, an artificially intelligent being that looks like a person. It’s going take control of all the old substitutes in the Badlands and kill everyone. I’m trying to stop it, that’s why I’m here. Lock me up, I don’t care, but we need to stop this.” I plant my hands on her desk. She looks up from her stream, looks at my hands, then raises her eyebrows in slow disapproval. I take my hands off her desk.
“Shanice,” I say. “You look like a reasonable person. You seem like someone who would care about the fact that everyone in the Badlands—”
“Name.”
I’m so surprised, I stutter. “That—that everyone in the Badlands will die if—”
“Name,” she repeats, giving me a look of complete disinterest.
I exhale in annoyance. “Tess Rockwood.”
With the speed of a turtle, she flicks out of the fashion stream and begins entering my details into a system on another stream. “Shanice, I just need to use a comm for five minutes—”
“Age.”
“Just five minutes—”
This time she doesn’t even bother repeating herself. She just looks at me with those same raised eyebrows.
“Sixteen.”
More flicking in the stream.
“Project Aevum. It’s called Project Aevum,” I babble desperately. “People I know have already been killed trying to stop this thing. Millions of people are going to die if we don’t—”
“Arm.”
“What?”
“Give me your arm.” Glancing nervously at the two Quicks, I extend one arm reluctantly in her direction. She sees my tronic and sighs. “Other arm.”
I obey. She flips it so my wrist is facing up and aims what looks like a very old version of a tronic gun at it.
“This won’t hurt . . . ,” she mutters.
The tronic gun emits a flash of light. I flinch with the sudden snap of pain.
“Much.”
A strange black branding has appeared on my arm, a series of dots and dashes of various thickness, about six inches long. It reminds me of a cityscape—the black dashes could be buildings, except they’re square instead of curved. Spots of blood ebb through the blackness. I squeeze it, eyes watering. “Is that permanent?”
Shanice does not answer me.
From underneath her desk, she pulls out a threadbare towel covered in tea-colored stains. On top of it is a roll of rough-looking toilet paper and a lump of gray soap.
“I’m going to give you some advice, since you obviously consider me such a trustworthy friend,” she says, her words dripping with sarcasm.
“Okay,” I say, bewildered.
“One. That’s the only toilet paper you’re going to get, so make it last. Two”—she slows her words down and leans forward. Her enormous cleavage is everywhere. “You are never going to get out of here. Registered!”
She yells the last word so unexpectedly that I jump. On hearing it, the two Quicks spring into action, each grabbing an arm.
“No—wait!” I shout as they pull me out of the small office. “I have to comm my uncle. I have to stop Aevum. Wait, stop!”
“Mmm-hmm . . .” is the last thing I hear before they drag me out.
Stark fear grips me. My feet try to dig into the bare concrete, but it’s no use. The Quicks are far stronger than I am. “No, no, no,” I hear myself saying. “No, no, no!”
With a rusty shriek, an outer door is wrenched open and the Quicks haul me into a closet-sized space. As soon as the door smashes shut behind us, the inner door to the cell is flung open. Amid jeers and hoots from the other prisoners, I am pushed inside, the door clanging shut loudly behind me. I land on my hands and knees in a shallow puddle of what I can only hope is water. The old wounds on my knees sting painfully.
“Hello, Newbie!”
“Look at your nice skull—”
A hand touches my head and I slap it away, panicked. I instantly leap to my feet. I’ve never wanted my knife so badly in my life. People crowd around me—scary-looking people. A man with open, leaky wounds on his face is blowing kisses at me. A woman swings a rope in circles—no, it’s her own long plait of hair, stuck with pointed pieces of metal. A couple of sharp-eyed kids no more than ten or eleven circle me like hyenas. Everyone looks like those creepy deep-sea fish that don’t get any sunlight.
Forget stopping Project Aevum. I’ll be lucky to make it through the next hour.
“Give us a kiss, love.” The man with the weeping wounds pulls me toward him. Dropping my towel, soap, and toilet paper, I spin into his grasp and slam my elbow into his stomach. He groans and sinks to his knees, to yells of amusement from the ragtag crowd. Fingers grab my throat from behind. With a shout, I whip them off, spinning around. My attacker’s a fat man with piggy eyes. I grab his shoulders and knee him in the balls as hard as I can. He makes a thin, pathetic noise and stumbles back a few steps, knocking the people behind him. The hyena kids dive in and snatch my dropped belongings, disappearing into the mob of prisoners before I have the chance to stop them.
Fists raised and panting hard, I whip around for whoever’s next.
“Well, well, well. It appears today’s newbie is a fighter. How delightful.” The crowd parts for a
man dressed in a hodgepodge three-piece suit: bright green pants, a faded pink jacket, and a purple vest. Gaudy rings crowd his fingers while a tangle of mismatched chains—gold, silver, a string of bright green stones—circles his neck. His irises are an unearthly light yellow. His hair is slicked back with enough oil to choke a whale.
He doesn’t walk so much as stroll, oozing confidence. A smile plays on thin lips, beneath an equally thin mustache. He’s flanked by several shirtless thugs with droopy faces.
Pink Suit stops a few feet away from me and makes an elaborate show of bowing deeply. “Hello,” he says, positively simpering. “I’m Myrtle. Myrtle Beach. And you are?”
“Tess Rockwood,” I supply, somewhat uneasily. This guy is a Class A weirdo.
“Welcome to the cell, Tess. You’ll come to know me as one of the top dogs around here.” At the phrase top dog, a few people in the crowd howl like dogs. Myrtle permits this for a moment, then silences the crowd with a curt wave of his hand. “Someone with whom it pays to be friends. I like to think of all of us cell mates as friends. And friends always look out for each other, don’t they? I will look out for you, if you, angel-pet, look out for me.”
“And what exactly does that mean?” I ask suspiciously, fists still raised.
“Oh no,” Myrtle says with a smile. “I can see what you’re thinking. Women are not my weakness. My weakness, angel-pet, is beautiful things.” He circles me, speaking in an impassioned whisper. “Luxurious creations, things that shine and sparkle and call to your soul, ‘Touch me! Wear me! Love me and display me for others to see!’ Objets d’arte created in dreams, crafted by the blessed.” He pauses in front of me. The dank prison light glints off his chains. “Beautiful things. Just. Like. This.” He slips a pointed fingernail under my necklace.
I swat it away. The crowd oohs, enthralled. “That’s not for sale.”
Myrtle’s icy eyes lock onto my necklace as if it has him under a spell. He licks his lips nervously, spittle bubbling in the corner of his mouth. “Of course, I would offer you a trade. New towel and soap?”
“No.”
“Guaranteed safety in the shower?”
“Don’t think I’ll be showering in here.”
“Place to sleep.”
“I’ll find one myself.”
“Or how about”—his effeminate voice drops to an ugly snarl—“I just don’t cut off your ears.”
Four thugs grab me.
“Hey!” I struggle against them. “Let me—”
A dirty rag is stuffed in my mouth. I gag on it, retching.
The crowd taunts me ecstatically, a cavalcade of deranged freaks. Myrtle dances around, relishing every moment. To my horror, I see he has a switchblade. What? How are the prisoners allowed to have knives?
“Hold her still!” he orders the thugs. He holds the blade to my ear. “This is what happens when rude little girls don’t listen to Myrtle,” he snarls. Gone is the weirdly charismatic top dog. In its place is a sociopath ready to cut off my ear. I can’t scream. I can’t move.
“Cut it off! Cut it off!” the crowd yells.
The blade bites the top of my ear and I shriek, my scream muffled.
“Cut it off! Cut it off!”
“Bye-bye, little ear!” he whispers, eyes glittering manically. “Maybe you’ll listen better next time, angel-pet—”
“Hey!” A strong voice behind him rips through the crowd. “Leave her alone, Myrtle. She’s with me.”
Myrtle hisses in displeasure, but after a moment, he takes the knife away from my ear. I almost die with relief. My legs collapse so I’m held aloft only by the strength of the thugs. Myrtle narrows his lemon-colored eyes angrily, and spits the word as if it tastes like metal. “Naz.”
With another hiss, Myrtle swings away from me. Naz. Shaved head, cargo pants, tank top, and scars. There’s one significant difference that hits me in the pit of my stomach. Naz has only one arm.
“I’ve been here eight years, fuega,” Myrtle spits. “What makes you think you can call the shots?”
“Because my girls kicked your ass yesterday and we’ll do it again if we have to.” Naz raises her one good hand casually in the air. From out of the shadows behind her, a gang of the toughest-looking women I’ve ever seen emerges. Many have shaved heads, just like Naz, and the same dark, hard eyes, and muscular builds.
What the hell? Naz couldn’t have been here more than a week, depending on how long I was unconscious—how had she managed to form a gang?
At the sight of the women, Myrtle’s thugs bristle. The crowd quietly starts to disperse.
Myrtle growls again, thin, ring-covered fingers twitching. “What’s my trade?”
She tosses something in his direction. He shoots his hand out and catches it. It’s a pink-and-yellow ceramic unicorn: a collectible. Cute, if useless. He grunts, quickly examining it from all angles. He holds it up to the light. He sniffs it. He even touches the tip of his tongue to its pointed horn and smacks his lips. His gaze flits between my necklace and the unicorn, obviously torn.
“Good trade?” Naz pushes.
He glances back to the unicorn, unable to stop a small smile of excitement from creeping onto his face. “Good trade.”
The thugs let me go. I fall to the floor and pull the dirty rag out of my mouth.
With his flock of thugs surrounding him like a cape, Myrtle spins around and swirls off. Naz’s women melt back into the shadows, and just like that, it’s all over.
Naz strides toward me. “Rockwood,” she growls, eyeing me with displeasure. “I knew you’d be back to screw up my life again.”
I hold my arm out so she can help me up but she just scowls at me and turns to stalk off. But just as she does, something on my arm catches her eye.
“What’s that?” She grabs my arm and looks closely at the black code Shanice had just burned into my flesh.
I wince, then use her iron grip to steady me as I get to my feet. “Don’t you have one too?” I ask, the metallic taste of the rag in my mouth.
With her eyes on my branding, she flips her arm over and shows me. It’s not as long, and the dashes are much thinner than the thick ones of my cityscape. “Yours is different,” she says accusingly.
I take a closer look at the brandings of the other prisoners’ arms and see she’s right. Different isn’t good. Did Shanice mark me for some reason? Does it have to do with the chip in my head? I twist my arm out of her grasp and nervously wrap my fingers around the strange pattern.
Naz gives me a long look of dirty suspicion. “You owe me a pack of smokes for the horse.”
“Actually, I think it was a unicorn.”
“Whatever.” With a final glare, she turns and heads off into the cell. I have no choice but to run after her.
“How long have you been here? Who were those women? Are the others here? What happened”—I was going to say “to your arm” but chicken out at the last minute—“on the roof after I was shot?” I can’t stop the questions from tumbling out of me as we weave our way deeper into the cell, away from the entrance. As we keep walking, I notice the cell is changing. It’s less freak show and more, for want of a better word, neighborly. It’s cleaner, for a start. A huge overhead light brightens the surrounding area. We pass families living in tent houses, complete with thin mattresses, chairs, even a few dogs curled up and sleeping. The atmosphere is much calmer.
“I’ve been here three days,” Naz says, threading her way easily through the crowds of people.
“How are you so connected?” I ask. “Isn’t there some kind of hierarchy?”
“I got family here.”
“Your family is here?” I’m stunned.
“My cousin Lopé. Thought that crazy fuega was still out in the Badlands. Turns out she’s been in here five years. I’m probably related to half the screwups in this joint.”
That explains the gang of women. “Who are all these people?” I ask, bewildered by the sheer numbers.
“Low-level crims. Hust
lers. Anyone who makes the Trust look bad.”
“Why weren’t they just banished?”
Naz shrugs. “Guess they want to keep an eye on us.”
“Naz,” I say, trying to catch her eye as we move deeper into the cell, “thank you. For stepping in back there. Especially after . . .” My words trail off.
She grunts, flashing me a dark look. “You screwed up bad, Rockwood, and I still don’t get why. But that doesn’t mean I’ll sit back and watch Myrtle cut off your ears. That crap makes it more dangerous for everyone.”
I nod, accepting this.
“I’m not forgiving you,” she clarifies, stopping and glancing around. “It’s just, this isn’t the time and place, you know?”
I nod again. “I’m so sorry, Naz,” I say quietly, “about this.” I place my hand gently on the shoulder of her absent arm, now just a dirty bandaged nub.
She stares at the ground for a long moment, then looks up at me. I am shocked to see tears shining in both eyes.
“Yeah, so am I,” she whispers hoarsely. There is so much sadness in her voice that my eyes instantly grow hot with tears too.
Then she exhales noisily and pushes past me, striding off.
I follow her to the front of a large tent with a wide opening. Big pieces of green fabric are strung up to form three walls and a roof. Inside, the floor is covered in faded straw mats. A few blankets are folded neatly in one corner. Cupboards made from old boxes line the walls, filled with various odds and ends: a sticky brown bottle marked MEDICINE, a green-handled hairbrush, a salt shaker. “This is Lopé’s place,” she announces. “Home, shit home.”
The dozen people sitting inside and around the house look up at me. I feel a sharp stab of recognition. Ling and Achilles are among them.
“Tess!” Achilles exclaims. “We thought you were dead!”
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” I reply, grateful he’s pleased to see me. Ling, however, remains seated and stone-faced.
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