Raining Fire

by Rajan Khanna

  “Why are you telling me this?” he asks.

  I just smile at him. “Give me the bat,” I say. He holds it out to me. I take it. “Thanks.”

  I turn to Ellie and bend down to her. “Good shot before,” I say. “Keep shooting like that, and you’ll be better than me in no time.”

  She presents the revolver to me, holding it by the trigger guard so the grip is toward me. I feel a lot of things in that moment—incredible affection, admiration, pride, but also an undercurrent of momentous sadness. I push the revolver back gently. “You keep it,” I say. “Use it well.” I rise back up. “Remember what I showed you.” I place a hand on her head and give it a little tousle. “Take care of these guys for me.”

  Then I hit the controls to slow us down. The truck speeds up, once more looking to ram us. “Get ready!” I say to Buzz. Then, when it’s just about to hit, I jump across the gap between the vehicles.

  My feet come down on the hood of the truck and then slide, and I have to drop to my hand to stabilize myself. I try to get a swing off at the windshield, but in my position it just lands weakly without doing anything.

  The truck swerves, and I shift to one side, but I reach out, see the free strap hanging there, and grab it, swinging out and to the side. I dangle from the strap, slamming into the side of the truck. A hand, from a person on the platform below, grips my leg, pulling me down, yanking on me. I hold tight to the strap, but only with my left hand, fingers rigid. With my right hand, I swing downward with the bat, as hard and as wildly as I can.

  The hand lets go for a moment, and I manage to pull myself up onto the upper platform. Making sure I’m in a stable position, or as stable as I’m going to get—legs curled beneath me, strap wrapped around my arm—I swing the bat again, this time aiming for the driver’s window and whatever else I can hit. I feel impact as the bat strikes metal but nothing else. My arm is already aching from the reverberation of the hits.

  Another hand grabs for me from above, aimed at my face; it grabs my chin and starts pulling. I look up to see another of the slavers on top of the truck, trying to pull me off. My neck protests in pain as my head is pulled back. I think about just jumping off of the truck and trying to roll away. But I still need to buy the Monster time to lay down some distance.

  I brace myself on the platform. With one hand, I pull on the slaver’s arm. With the other, the one grabbing the strap, I wrap that strap around the arm, tangling it as much as I can.

  The slaver tries to pull his hand away but can’t. The hand is trapped. I ready the bat and—

  I’m pulled down again by the slaver beneath me and I fall. There’s a mad moment of chaos as I tumble out into air, but I scrabble and manage to hold onto the slaver, trailing him and then holding onto his leg. The bat goes whirling off behind us. We’re still moving at speed, and we both slam into the side of the truck.

  Then he slips, and I slip, and my feet scrape ground for a moment until I climb back up his legs, then to his waist. He’s holding on to the strap with both arms, so I use his clothes and his harness to climb up. One. Limb. At. A. Time. He takes one hand off of the strap to try to shake me loose. I catch sight of his gun beneath him, strapped around his chest. But I can’t reach it, not tangled up underneath him. If only I had a weapon . . .

  Holding onto his shoulder strap, I get one arm around his neck, pulling it back. I fumble at the gun straps, trying to pull it free. Trying to . . . just . . . re ach . . . for . . .

  The truck suddenly stops.

  I jerk forward, without an anchor, and fly through the air.

  I hit the ground—hard—and I try to roll, but everything feels broken.

  I hear the truck door open and raise my head to see two sets of boots walk toward me.

  I manage to get my head up further and then force the rest of my body to follow. Everything hurts, everything feels battered and crushed, and I can barely breathe, but I shakily rise to my feet.

  I feel like I’m in thick soup. One of the men, wearing a cowboy hat and a white mask made up to look like a skull, wades in. I try to move aside as he raises his fists, but one slams into my stomach and I drop again, coughing and spitting.

  “You son of a fucking bitch,” he says. Then, “Get him up.”

  The other guy comes around and jerks me up from behind, holding me by my armpits. I want to say something, mouth off. My mouth is the only weapon I have left, but I can’t figure out how to make that happen. Then Skull Mask’s meaty hand closes on my throat and my breath starts to fade.

  Missed your chance, Ben. No last words for you.

  Then, sudden pain in my neck, down near my shoulders. I catch sight of a syringe pulling away. Skull Mask removes his hand from my throat, and it trails other hands behind it. An endless flutter of hands following him as he backs up. I feel my head swim and my legs go liquid. I try to hold myself up.

  Why?

  What?

  . . .

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  When I come to, I’m in the back of the truck. I’m sitting up and my hands are bound behind me, looped into the cage. I’m not alone. The cage is full of people. Men, women; light, dark. They all look bedraggled, but mostly unharmed. There are a few bruises and scrapes, but nothing serious. Nothing that would mark down value significantly.

  Next to me is a man with dark hair and a thin, tan face. He has bad skin and a couple of days’ growth of facial hair. His face is completely uncovered, which unnerves me, but then all of the people here are. Myself included. I don’t know what they did with my goggles and scarf and hat.

  My head is pounding, the aftereffects of whatever they gave me to knock me out. But I try to push my brain to functioning. That we’re all here, tied up, means we’re going to market. Either to be sold, or else to deliver on a promise. I can’t really discern any pattern in the people here. A couple of them are on the bigger side, but not by much. And no one here is well-fed. Probably market, then. Where the more depraved and wealthy individuals of the Sick will barter for people.

  Dad and I didn’t come by slavers too often. That’s one of the benefits of living in the air. Most of the time, you’re more worried about pirates or raiders. Even then, they’ll just take your ship and leave you to die.

  But down on the ground? That’s another story. I’d heard about slavers when visiting a trading post or settlement, but they were shadowy concepts, fodder for my imagination when I was young. I remember asking Dad who would buy slaves. Most people barely had enough food or water or fuel for themselves. Who had enough to buy whole people? His answer was simple and straightforward. “Life is cheap,” he said. “You can own someone for very little.”

  And there are those who would be considered rich in the Sick. People sitting on stockpiles of food or weapons or materials. People with rare skills that are in demand. People who start their own settlements and make free with their settlers’ things. For people like that, they can almost barter for anything they want. If what they want is a person, well . . .

  The trick, at least as far as I see it, is being able to enforce that slavery. Someone might barter for me, to use as a sex slave or labor or, hell, for target practice, but they have to be able to hold me. Restrain me. Buying a slave that you then have to keep under watch and guard all the time hardly seems worth the trouble. There are . . . ways, of course. Horrific ways that I’ve heard of. I don’t like to think of them. But they’re the extreme cases.

  If you want to keep a slave around for a while, then you have to keep them fed and watered, let them live in a place that isn’t covered in shit (or risk disease). That’s a lot of capital to spend.

  So, yeah, I guess I don’t really understand the whole slave economy very much. But I have a feeling I’m going to get an education very soon.

  * * *

  The ride passes mostly in silence. Occasionally someone coughs. Every so often there’s a grunt. A sniffle. But no one says very much.

  Until one of the men in the group starts screaming. It starts
as a slow grunt that builds into a growl, and then rises in volume and pitch until he’s in full-on scream mode. One of the others tells him to shut up, but he just continues. Then he starts pulling on his bonds, straining at his bonds until his face is red. After a few minutes of this, the truck rolls to a stop. Only, Screamer doesn’t stop. His face is bright red now, his wet mouth is open, the cords on his neck rigid.

  It’s annoying as hell, but I’m more curious than anything. Has this guy really lost it, or is this some kind of play? If the latter, I want to be ready in case all hell breaks loose. My hands are tied behind me. But my legs are free. That’s something.

  Two of the slavers come to the back of the cage, one with a shotgun in his hands, ready to fire. They wear mostly black, or clothes that used to be black and are now gray from all the dust. Unlike us, they wear masks. One of them has a bandana around the lower side of his face and a kind of hard, black helmet like a beetle on his head. That’s the one with the shotgun. The other one has a full cloth face mask with eyeholes and a mouth hole cut out of it. That one moves to Screamer’s wrists and unties them. Then he moves to the door of the cage and opens it. He climbs up into the cage, a small pistol down by his side. He walks up to Screamer, who is still screaming, but now also wiping his hands together, like he’s washing them, but there’s no water.

  “Stop,” the slaver commands in a gravelly voice.

  Screamer doesn’t. He looks up at the slaver with wide eyes and a red face, but he doesn’t stop. By now he’s sucking in lungfuls of air between screams, and there are tears in his eyes either from the effort or from emotion, and he’s still wiping his hands in front of him. Then he lowers his head and rocks back and forth, still screaming.

  The slaver doesn’t repeat himself. Instead, he bends down and hooks his free hand under Screamer’s armpit and pulls him to his feet. He guides Screamer to the door of the cage, showing surprising care in helping him off of the truck. The other slaver, with the shotgun, swivels smoothly to cover the man. The slaver with the pistol pushes Screamer to his knees, places the pistol to the side of his head, and shoots.

  The screams stop.

  The slavers lock up the cage and disappear.

  A moment later, the truck continues on.

  * * *

  I try to sleep. There’s nothing much else that I can do, restrained like I am. Oddly, restrained gently—not with metal cuffs or even plastic, but with something softer, like cloth. I’m guessing it’s so they wouldn’t cause too much damage. Or risk the loss of stock.

  If I’m going to try to make my escape, it’s going to be when we get to where we’re going. As long as I don’t scream or make too much trouble, they will keep me alive until we get there.

  That’s the theory, at least.

  So I try to sleep, and I get to something mostly resembling it. The bumping and swaying of the cage actually hits a rhythm, and while I don’t fall into a deep sleep, I fall into a trance. Images flicker behind my eyes, images of people. Of places. My father. Claudia. The gone-but-not-forgotten Cherub.

  Miranda.

  That’s the one I try to shy away from. To close my already-closed eyes to. But that’s the face that comes back. Miranda. Her hair tumbling out in front of her glasses. A half smile on her face as she looks up at me. The tiny patches of freckles across her face.

  I miss you, Miranda.

  As if acknowledging that unlocks some kind of door, I see them all, then. All the boffins, particularly Clay and Sergei. I don’t even tense up at the appearance of Clay’s face. Then Diego and Rosie. Mal. Tess. Cheyenne. Even Lewis from Tamoanchan.

  Haunted by ghosts.

  Restrained in that cage, I can’t escape them.

  It goes on like that—images from the past in half-dreams of shadowy darkness until the truck stops, and we’re all released from the cage. One of the slavers barks out to us, “When the door opens, walk out and stand in a line. Do you understand? Try anything, or don’t do as you’re told, and you will be punished. Is that clear?”

  He doesn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he moves to the door and opens it. Through the bars I can see maybe eight slavers. All armed in some way. All prepared for some kind of resistance. They look like veterans—they’ve no doubt done this many times before. So we do what they say. It becomes a kind of calculated gamble. You can try to make a break for it now, when there are eight and possibly more slavers who have seen all of the tricks in the book. Or you can wait to see if you’re bought, and maybe try something on the other side, when you’re with someone who might not be as savvy and might not have the guns or the numbers on his side.

  Then again, maybe that works against you as well.

  Me, I’ve decided to bide my time. Unless shit starts blowing up. But for now, I’m content to go along with this. Until I can make a better move.

  I follow the others to the door of the cage and carefully climb down to the ground, where I get in line behind the guy with the slightly scarred cheeks. As I slowly take in where we are, and what’s in front of me, I recognize it. I never saw it from this angle—not on the ground—we were smuggled inside the first time. But I did take off from it, with the Cherub, and I did move around inside of the place. I remember the color of the walls and the pipes that raced along them from one room to another. There’s no other place this could be. I do the mental calculations in my head, and it’s right, geographically. Based on the time we’ve been traveling, it would put us right there. At least as close as I can guess. Yes, it has to be. I have to be right.

  I’m back in Gastown’s helium plant.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF MIRANDA MEHRA

  Days have passed, and I’m back at work on the vaccine. Between that and sleep, there’s little else. Dimitri came back to the lab yesterday, his arm still in a sling. Some of his wounds are starting to heal, though. But he won’t meet my eyes very often. I think he still holds it against me, the torture—how can I blame him?

  It wasn’t the Helix this time, either. Not Maya. It was the Valhallans. True experts in torture and sadism.

  To say I had little hope, little sense of anything good in the world, would be an understatement. I felt like I wasn’t in control of anything anymore. I wasn’t even a person. I was just a number in an equation.

  Then someone new just walked into the lab.

  He was delivering a bag full of supplies, and at first I didn’t look up, but then he dropped them off at the next station from mine, and I glanced up and saw him.

  Clay.

  My Clay.

  Here. On Valhalla.

  Something surged inside of me. Something that I didn’t realize I still had. I had felt bloodless, like a corpse, but suddenly I had a heart again and my face flushed.

  But I couldn’t say anything. Not there. Not in front of everyone.

  He looked different—his hair was longer, and he was wearing a beard. But I would recognize that earnest expression anywhere. I gave him a little nod. “I’m Frederick,” he said.

  “Miranda,” I said back. Very polite. Both of us pretending we were meeting for the first time. Then he left.

  I haven’t been able to think of much else since. Was he also kidnapped from the island? Or was he press-ganged? The last time I saw him, he was on Tamoanchan, still there as the Helix and Valhallans were attacking. Does this mean they took the island, then? Or does it mean that he left?

  One thing I’m sure of: Clay didn’t join up willingly. Of all the people I worked with, back at the commune and afterward, Clay was the most ardent. He approached science the way religious people approached their religions. It was one of the things that used to rub Ben the wrong way. But it was something I always appreciated about Clay. I think he loves Science more than I do.

  What if I never see him again? What then?

  Will he be able to see me again?

  I don’t know where he is now, or what he does here other than deliver supplies. Or if he’ll be back.

  But
when he is, I’ll be waiting.

  * * *

  A week passed, and Clay didn’t reappear in the lab. My hopes sunk, thinking that maybe his presence here was random, and that he couldn’t find a way to get back. That brief moment of color in my bloodless world started to fade again to gray.

  Instead, he found his way to my cell. Someone knocked at the door, then it opened, and it was Clay.

  “Clay!” I said, then caught myself.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I was able to get the guard to give us some privacy.”

  “How?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I’m one of them. That gives me some power.”

  “One of them? How, Clay? Why?”

  He looked behind him, then moved forward. He grabbed my hands, rubbing them. “Miranda . . .” His eyes were shining, then swelling with tears. “I thought you were dead. We all did.”

  I shook my head. “No. They took me here. They must have planned it.”

  He nodded slowly. “They wanted your knowledge and experience,” he said. “That’s how they operate.”

  “I know.”

  “They look for people to join them, recruiting, or else just kidnapping them to increase their ranks.”

  “I know,” I repeated.

  “I just . . .” he said. “After what happened to you . . . or what I thought happened to you. Hell, Miranda. I wanted to do something about it. Things at the island, well . . .”

  “What?” I asked.

  “The island got hit hard. The labs, all that we built . . .” His jaw clenched. “A man named Malik came to our rescue, and—”

  “Malik? There?”

  He nodded. “You know him?”

  “Yes,” I said, remembering being pulled out of the ocean by his people. Being a prisoner on his boat. The dinner where I got him drunk and made my escape.