“I’m fucking freezing,” she managed through chattering teeth. She pressed herself to him and he wrapped his arms around her. Her skin was cold to the touch. He had so many questions, but he could not voice them, startled and frightened by her state. He took her hand, leading her into the bathroom, grabbing the fallen blanket on the ground as they passed it to wrap around her shoulders.
He sat her on the counter and turned on the faucet, grabbing the cleanest towel he could find. Even though the water would be cold, he knew he had to clean the dirt and grime off and be sure that her wounds were not serious. He was thankful that at least the heat was working in his apartment again. Kailynn’s blue lips and pale skin were frightening.
“What the hell happened?” he repeated, gently dabbing the dirt away from her skin. She shook her head quickly, pushing his hand away.
“It’s cold.”
“I know, sorry.”
Deciding she was too cold to be treated immediately, Raphael took off his shirt and grabbed the blanket around Kailynn’s shoulders. He pulled her off the counter and they both went to the floor, sitting in a corner with Raphael holding Kailynn tight to him, the blanket surrounding both of them to trap their body heat.
When Kailynn’s shivering had finally slowed, Raphael glanced at Kailynn’s face. She was still pale, her eyes swollen from crying, but she was sleeping soundly.
“Kailynn…” he called. She slowly stirred, turning to look at him. She was warmer, but did not want to leave Raphael’s arms. Her mind was still trying to make sense of what had happened and what it meant for her and her brother.
“Please, tell me what happened.”
Kailynn felt the tears return immediately. She closed her eyes against them and lowered her head.
“We fucked up.”
“Who?”
“Theo and me,” she whispered. She went through the entire plot, telling Raphael what the Heart of Trid gang had done by stealing Golden Elite Isa’s card and finding the addresses classified before forming a plan to attack the warehouse and rig it to explode and destroy Venus. Raphael was unable to stop the shocked expression that crossed his features as she explained, but he did not interrupt her.
The tears had taken over by the time she was finished explaining. Raphael held her as she cried, mumbling that she did not know whether Theo was dead or alive or what she would do now that she was a wanted criminal. She was sure her face had been captured by the security cameras and shown to every Official in Anon.
She knew she was going to prison and likely facing death for conspiracy and treason.
Kailynn cried herself into exhaustion. She was sleeping heavily when Raphael carefully moved from behind her and went back into the flat, seeing the woman he had picked up the previous night still passed out on his bed. He groaned and shook her awake, telling her to find her clothes and leave. She was indignant and angry, but he did not care about preserving her feelings. His thoughts were focused on Kailynn.
The failed plan was no minor occurrence. The Heart of Trid gang and Kailynn were in an enormous amount of danger.
Raphael carried Kailynn to the bed and covered her with all the blankets he could find. Once he was sure that she would be warm, he left the apartment and went to her job, telling Brad that she was very sick and could not work. Brad grumbled, but he must have seen the worried look on Raphael’s face because he did not press the Trid with questions. Once Raphael had taken care of that, he ran to the different members of their own gang, telling everyone that the Heart of Trid gang had been captured for a failed attempt to shut down Venus and that they needed to find out what had happened to the members, particularly Theo.
Raphael went to everyone he could think of and asked if they had heard about the warehouse incident the previous night. A few had heard about it through other contacts and that sent Raphael on a chase for some solid information. He was hearing everything from twelve Officials being killed to the entire Heart of Trid gang being killed in the warehouse and dragged away to become medical subjects in Anon.
Just when he was getting frustrated with the search, Alyssa from his own gang ran up to him and told him that she knew what had happened to the Heart of Trid gang.
One Official had been killed in the struggle—adding another criminal count to the gang’s sentence—and seven members of the large Trid gang had died as well. The rest had been taken into custody and were being held at Uren Correctional Facility, the roughest, deadliest prison on the entire planet.
“What about Theo?” he pressed.
“He’s alive,” Alyssa assured. “He’s at Uren with the rest.”
Raphael rushed to tell Kailynn the news. He found her in the bathroom, naked, treating her wounds with old antiseptic that she had found under the sink. Raphael explained the situation to Kailynn and gave her the clothes he had picked up at her place.
“Viv said she would dye your hair darker. We can find contacts to change your eye color. We’ll have to find a way to keep you hidden.”
“For how long?” Kailynn murmured. “And what about Theo? He’s on death row. And you know they don’t wait to execute Trids.”
“I know, but you are not on death row, so don’t do anything stupid enough to put you there,” Raphael said strongly. “You are the one that got away. They will be searching high n’ low for you. Stay hidden.”
Kailynn lowered her eyes. She could not leave her brother in prison to be killed. He was the only family she had left. She had heard horror stories about Uren. Uren did not waste their lethal serums on Trids. They took them out back and shot them. Kailynn shivered at the thought. It was the same way both her parents died—one by Official fire, the other by Trid fire. She could not risk her brother, her only living family, being killed by a bullet to the head.
Raphael embraced her tightly, trying to convey his worry. For all he said to her, he knew that she would not listen. He just had to keep an eye on her and make sure she did not do anything stupid while trying to save Theo.
“I’ll help you however I can. Just tell me what you need.”
Chapter Four
Kailynn was bound and determined to help her brother get out of Uren. She had helped Theo get one man in the Heart of Trid gang out of the same prison years before and knew that the guards were willing to look the other way on escapees if they were compensated well. Kailynn never knew where Theo had gotten the money from to pay for the escape, but she never asked. She knew the Heart of Trid gang had some nefarious dealings within Trid. Her own gang, the Cobalt Leopards, never dealt in drugs or weapons. They were a small group, more concerned with each other’s safety than with gaining money and prestige among those in Trid. Each member did what was necessary to survive and stayed together for protection.
For that reason, Kailynn was a little out of practice in dealing with career criminals in Trid.
She had gone to her brother’s contact in Uren and asked what it took to release those in the Heart of Trid gang. The answer was twenty-thousand credits a head with her brother being fifty-five thousand credits. He had not even blinked when he told her the numbers.
Kailynn had almost choked on her tongue. Twenty-two members—the surviving members of the Heart of Trid—were imprisoned, one of which was her brother. That was four-hundred-twenty thousand credits for the basic members of the gang. The grand total was four-hundred, seventy-five thousand credits. Kailynn felt as if the words had physically struck her in the chest, causing her to bleed all over the ground.
However, she put on a brave face, hiding her shock.
“How long before they start executing them?” Kailynn pressed.
“A year, maybe,” the patrol officer had said with a shrug. “Apparently, your boys did something that has drawn attention from Venus. Everyone’s waitin’ for her to make an announcement on their fates.”
The fear in Kailynn’s belly turned cold.
She left, feeling discouraged.
Viv was trimming Kailynn’s hair and preparing the d
ye when she finally asked how much money was needed to free the Heart of Trid. When Kailynn whispered the amount, Viv’s hands stilled and her eyes went wide.
“What?”
“Yeah…”
Slowly, Viv resumed trimming Kailynn’s hair, trying to get over her shock at the large number.
“Is…can we…I mean, do you have a way to get that money?”
Kailynn sighed and closed her eyes.
“I’m sure there are ways…” Kailynn murmured. “But even if I were to steal as many credits as I could from the Walking District, I couldn’t come close. We’d have to take up the Heart of Trid drug ring and traffic at a higher price. I might have to work at one of the clubs and whore a bit to get some more money. I don’t think there is enough money in all of Trid to free them.”
“You could free only Theo.”
“I could,” Kailynn agreed. “But he will need the gang with him. The other gangs are pissed that they brought the Officials down on Trid with this stunt. I saw a bunch of Officials just walking here—thankful they didn’t see me. Theo will need to be protected when everyone comes after him.”
Viv continued snipping the ends of Kailynn’s hair, thoughtful.
“But…what happens if you get him out? The Officials will come looking for him again.”
“I doubt it,” Kailynn said. “I mean, what do they care? They don’t want to warehouse him and they have to wait for Venus to tell them what to do. If he disappears, problem solved.”
Viv went silent, running her hands over Kailynn’s hair before grabbing the dye, setting it on the makeshift table next to her and putting on gloves. She started to move Kailynn’s hair around, preparing to dye it.
“Kailynn,” she started slowly.
“Yeah?”
“Why not get work in Anon?”
Kailynn snorted.
“You need papers to work in Anon.”
“I know someone who can get you papers.”
Kailynn turned to Viv, her eyes narrow.
“You’ve looked into getting papers?”
“Why the hell not?” Viv asked sharply. “You wanna stay in this shithole all your life?”
“What the fuck are we qualified to do in Anon?” Kailynn challenged.
“Will you turn around?” Viv said, exasperated, pushing Kailynn’s shoulders. She started applying the dye, hoping that Kailynn would stay still as she spoke. “I know, we’re not really qualified.”
“Not really?” Kailynn repeated, incredulous. “When the fuck did you learn how to read?”
“Shut up, Kailynn. You can’t read, either,” Viv snapped. “But there are ways.”
“Enough to get nearly five-hundred thousand?”
“Maybe,” Viv said. “As a Significant.”
Kailynn groaned, closing her eyes.
“Oh no, Viv. Don’t tell me that you’re thinking of becoming a Significant.”
“Why the hell not? They make a lot more money than those who whore themselves in the Walking District,” Viv defended. “They make a lot of money. And most of the time, all they do is talk to people.”
“That’s what they want you to believe,” Kailynn said. “Significants are asked to do all sorts of sick things for those nobleman assholes.”
“For seven grand a pop, I’d do some sick shit, too.”
Kailynn was about to snap at Viv again about considering the work, but the number stilled her tongue immediately.
“Seven grand? How do you know?”
“One of the guys I chatted up a few weeks ago,” Viv said, continuing to apply the dye to Kailynn’s hair, watching the light brown color darken almost immediately. “He was talking about how much money he had lost because he had a partnership with a Significant and he lost seven-thousand credits three times a week to spend a night with her.”
“For sex?” Kailynn said, blinking in shock.
“That’s the thing. The sex cost extra, like, five-thousand extra.”
Kailynn turned around and stared at Viv, her eyes wide with disbelief.
“You’re making this shit up.”
“No,” Viv said. “The guy was slobbering drunk and was whining about how his wife would divorce him for spending so much of their money on a Significant. He was really upset about it.”
“All that over a Significant?”
“Guess so.”
Even though everything inside Kailynn told her that becoming a Significant was not an option, the prospect of the money to be earned gave her pause. Viv walked to one side of Kailynn, continuing to apply the dye.
“It’s not a bad way to make money, you know,” she said. “I mean, don’t you think that most who work as Significants just need the money? It’s something to think about.”
“The idea of prostituting fake company to the nobles is more sickening than whoring,” Kailynn said slowly, lowering her gaze.
“Kailynn,” Viv started, standing in front of her. “Who cares if it’s fake company they want? They’re willing to pay for it. There is no reason for you to not exploit that.”
Kailynn stared at Viv. The older Trid woman could see that Kailynn was nervous about going against her beliefs for the sake of money. However, Kailynn was also in a situation where leaving her brother in a prison cell, waiting to be shot and forgotten with the rest of the Trids, was unimaginable.
The thought disturbed Kailynn, but at seven-thousand a visit, she was sure she could raise the money to free her brother and most of the others in the Heart of Trid gang working as a Significant. She would have to be smart about how she dealt with her affairs, since her papers would be fake, and she would have to continue working even after getting the gang out of Uren to ensure suspicions remained low.
But it was the first time that Kailynn believed she could make the money to save her brother’s life.
“Who was the guy you said could get me papers?”
Kailynn had asked for the five hundred credits from Raphael to pay the man who would provide her with forged papers. Raphael immediately demanded to know what she was planning to do, and she explained truthfully. Raphael was strongly against the idea at first. He did not think of the money Kailynn could make at first—he thought only about the steep punishment of life in prison or death for forging papers to get into the capital city. He had told Kailynn not to do anything that would get her in trouble, but she had already concocted her plan that could easily lead her to death row.
However, Kailynn continued to explain the money that Viv had said she could make. Eventually, the words pushed past Raphael’s initial worry.
He gave her the money and went with her to the programmer who had been kicked into Trid after losing all his money to his drug addiction. He still had citizenship, which still allowed him to access to duplicate the template for electronic citizenship.
When Raphael and Kailynn met with him, he was thin and sickly, still twitching from his high the previous night.
They sat with him as he shakily discussed all the information she would need to know for her fake citizenship, showing her what her documentation looked like before giving her a fake name.
Jacyleen Lynden.
He then warned her that she needed to carry the papers on her at all times and to avoid getting sick or hurt while in Anon. He explained that everyone in Anon had a PIM chip implanted behind their right ear and he could not give her one because they could only be programmed by a hospital computer connected to Venus directly. If she was found not to have a PIM chip, she could be immediately arrested.
Once she had her papers, copied onto a small drive that she held tightly, terrified she would lose it due to its small size, Kailynn went to a shop in the Walking District, buying clothes that would help her blend into Anon. She only bought one outfit, unable to afford anything else.
She then went back to Raphael’s place, showered, shaved, and tried to make herself look as least-Trid-like as possible.
The following day, she dressed in her new clothes and, holding her fa
ked citizenship, cautiously crossed the border into Anon.
Once there, she walked out of the older part of Anon into the clean, bright streets of Tiao’s capital. There were towering buildings, clean and bright, made of glass and metal, reflecting light from the sun. The streets were clean as well, which was easy to maintain since there were never people on the walkways. Kailynn knew that there were extensive roadways under the surface of the city where the self-driven cars could move about without detection, but she could not hear noise under her feet.
The city was surprisingly quiet, apart from the dull humming that seemed omnipresent on the planet.
Kailynn wandered around the city, feeling small and out of place among the towering structures. She was starting to get nervous about being caught or lost when she finally saw the round building of sweeping glass with the word “Companion” along the top.
Taking a deep breath, she began walking toward Companion.
She walked around the building twice, trying to find the entrance, not sure if she should walk in where she saw the road raise up in front of the building or not.
Taking a chance, Kailynn walked through the black glass doors that opened for her immediately, leading her to another set of black doors.
When she passed through the second set of doors, she felt like she had stepped into another world. The room was dark and slightly cold, with dark coverings on the walls and floor. There were couches of deep red and black scattered about the large greeting room and, sitting on the couches, talking lightly, were several extremely attractive people.
They all turned when she entered.
“Well, hello, beautiful,” one man said, standing and walking to her, his opened shirt exposing his well-defined muscles. “Anything I can help you with today?”
Kailynn was immediately reminded of the prostitutes that tried to pick up tricks in the Walking District.
“Trust me, gorgeous,” another man started, also approaching her. He was wearing a tight black sweater and sporting a perfect smile, “you don’t want him. I’d be better suited for you, I can tell.”
The Significant Page 4