Apocalypse Nyx

by Kameron Hurley

  Khos shrugged. “When they get hungry, they’ll shift. It’s a defense mechanism. If you get too weak to hold form, you shift back to human.”

  “How long?” Nyx said.

  “Three days? About that,” Khos said.

  “You don’t intend to leave these dogs in here without any food for three days, do you?” Taite said. “They’ll eat each other!”

  “You got a better idea, smart kid?” Nyx said.

  “I could shoot ’em,” Anneke said. “Shifters always try to shift back when you shoot ’em.”

  “Pleasant group you have here,” Khos muttered.

  “Can you get it out of them any sooner?” Nyx said. “You got a humane way to do it, big man, you’ve got your shot.”

  He huffed at her and looked from her to Anneke and back. “All right,” he said. He opened the door to the barking pack and slammed it behind him.

  “Big job to give someone we just met,” Taite said.

  “What, you want to do it?” Nyx said. “You go walk right in.”

  “You don’t have to be mean about it.”

  “How long have you been in Nasheen? Of course I have to be mean about it.”

  She pushed past him and went back to her room. She found Rhys waiting at the door.

  “Fuck, what—” she began.

  Then she saw he held something in his hand. She stopped still in the hall.

  “What the hell is that?” she said.

  “It’s . . . a heart,” he said. He held it out in front of him. His whole body was taut. His face was grim. The heart was as big as his fist, bloody and still bleeding. For a half moment she thought she was dreaming or having some kind of flashback.

  “Whose . . . heart?” she asked, because it seemed like the most logical thing to ask.

  “She said it was mine.”

  “Who said?”

  “The woman who was here.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” he said, but his tone was still distant, disaffected.

  “Then how can it be yours?” Nyx said. Her hand moved back toward her scattergun, almost unconsciously.

  “I . . . don’t know,” he said. “This woman . . . she was . . . it’s like I knew her from somewhere.”

  “Yeah, well, I thought I did, too,” Nyx said. She followed the line of the corridor with her gaze, but saw no one else there. Finally within arm’s distance of Rhys, she took the heart into her hand.

  Nyx considered it a moment, then bit into the tough meat of it and chewed thoughtfully. Swallowed.

  She put the heart back into Rhys’s hand and then wiped her bloody hand on her tunic. “It’s a dog’s heart,” she said. “Human tastes different. You’re fine.” She opened her door. He stared after her, still unmoving.

  Nyx sighed. “Listen,” she said, “if you are going to last this mission, you need to understand something about how people win. You don’t hit someone in the face. You demoralize them first. She comes back, you shoot her. Get some sleep.”

  “But . . . she knows where we are.”

  “Of course she does. We have her dogs. Her family was right—she wanted us here. I have my guesses on why, and we’re going to undermine her.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “You don’t,” she said.

  “What . . . what do I do with this?”

  “Cook it up with some onions and gravy,” she said.

  He curled his lip at her, and that’s when she knew he’d be all right. “I don’t eat meat, Nyx.”

  “Good night, Rhys.” She closed the door.

  The privies on the floor were shared, but her room had its own sink. She went to it now and washed her hands. Stared at her bloody mouth in the mirror. She bared her bloody teeth and grimaced at her own reflection.

  After rinsing out her mouth, Nyx assembled all of her weapons. She didn’t sleep that night. Instead, she brought Anneke in and laid out the plan.

  “Rasim needs to think I turned on you,” Nyx said.

  Anneke crossed her arms and spit sen in the sink. “Why’d you turn on us?”

  “I did some bad things in prison,” Nyx said. “Shit my team shouldn’t know about. You know what I’m talking about.”

  Anneke’s arms were covered in prison tattoos. She nodded. “Yeah, I get it.”

  “Once Khos gets the location of the next factory they’re blowing up and where she’ll be after, we pack up like we’re going to stop them together, get it?”

  “Keep going.”

  “You set up on the roof. Need you to hit Khos and Taite with tranquilizer darts. I’ll take Rhys. Tranquilizers will mess with his talent. Don’t want to shut him out in case we need that later. I only need a half hour.”

  “Half hour to do what?”

  “Taite would say I’m confessing some sins,” Nyx said. “But it’s between me and her. Not you and the boys. I know you get that. They won’t.”

  Anneke chewed her lip. “Don’t like this one, boss.”

  “Half an hour, Anneke. Then you bring the boys in and we haul her in. All right?”

  A knock on the door. Nyx answered. It was Khos. “Got the factory location,” Khos said. “They’re blowing it up tomorrow afternoon when everyone’s at end-of-week prayer.”

  “Tell me you’ve got more than that.”

  He showed his teeth. “She’s in a big old grain silo just north of the burned out factory. It’s just her and half a dozen shifters.”

  “Let’s go fuck some stuff up then,” Nyx said.

  And all that left Nyx here, holding a scattergun to Rhys’s chest. The look he gave her as her finger squeezed the trigger was one she’d seen on the faces of a hundred dead boys. It was one she’d never wanted to see on his face, but she preferred it to the yearning look he’d given her earlier. She didn’t know what to do with that look. She knew what to do with this one.

  She squeezed the trigger.

  The blast took Rhys off his feet. He slammed onto the rooftop. She crossed to him in two long strides and knelt beside him. She pressed her cheek to his and whispered. “Stay still. They’re watching. They need to think I believed you.”

  He wheezed for air. She placed her fingertips on his chest. She had loaded the scattergun with soft organic pellets, the sort that the military used for training exercises. They burst on impact, leaving no residue or shrapnel, but they could bruise and even break ribs. She had a feeling she’d been close enough to break a couple of Rhys’s ribs.

  But that was better than killing him.

  She holstered her scattergun and headed back down the stairs. She needed him to lie still for a half hour, hopefully more.

  Nyx got to the bottom of the stairs, where Anneke sat with the bodies of Taite and Khos, sniper rifle on her knee.

  “Get this buttoned up quick, boss,” Anneke said.

  “Half an hour,” Nyx said. “Then you come in with guns blazing.”

  “Would prefer that the other way around.”

  “Gotta end this,” Nyx said.

  Anneke nodded.

  Nyx put her respirator in her mouth and took off running in the direction of the grain silo, two kilometers away. It was a hot run, but she was twenty-seven and good on her feet, still. She yanked out her scattergun as she came into the shadow of the silo and sucked down a bulb of water.

  A small square, like a dog door, was carved into the silo. She squeezed in, just barely getting her ass through, and muscled her way up the stairs. She went up and up, past a room teeming with dogs all panting over a water trough. Nyx kept her weight on the outside of her feet and breathed shallowly until she was up and out of their perception.

  She found Rasim in a converted office. She sat at the table with a gun in her hand already pointed at Nyx. Her hair hung in a long braid down her back, and she’d swapped out her clothes for sensible tunic and trousers and boots.

  “Liked your hair better in Punjai,” Nyx said.

  “I knew you were here,” Rasim said.

  “Cle
arly,” Nyx said. “I knew you wanted me here. I figured the best way to get revenge on a woman even bel dames won’t touch is to frame me for something pretty dishonorable, like blowing up Nasheenian weapons factories.”

  “When did you know?”

  “Sparring.”

  “I thought so.”

  “So now what?” Nyx said. “You want to give me the speech?”

  “What speech?”

  “A speech all the angry women like you give when I kill your sisters or your brothers or your daughters or your sons. Some angry, frothy rant about how unfair it all is, and how you loved them so much. I gave you some time, see. It’s just us. You can spew away.”

  Rasim smiled thinly. “You know why I didn’t finish my bel dame training?”

  “Because you knew what we’d be?”

  “No,” she said, “because my sister died in a prison brawl. Binyamin was always tougher than me. But she got mashed in the head. It wasn’t even you who did it.”

  “I get it,” Nyx said. “Somebody else got to you. Who wants me framed for this? How much they pay you?”

  “It’s too late for that,” Rasim said.

  “You’re a good girl,” Nyx said. “Doesn’t have to end this way.”

  “I’m going to be rich,” Rasim said, “and you’ll be back in prison. I think it’s a fine way to end things.”

  “Why the dogs?”

  “Because I love them,” she said. “Does it need to be more complicated than that?”

  “They’re just animals.”

  “Shifters can become dogs,” she said. “Are they more animal in form, or should we treat them as humans? What if they shifted and did not have the energy to shift back? Lots of shifters choose to live their lives as dogs. Besides, they’re untraceable. And every one of them will be happy to point to you as the one who directed them to blow this all up.”

  “You have the others rigged?”

  She nodded. “All the plants that are left will blow up in . . . oh, two hours, maybe. Not much more than that. What will you do about it?”

  “Tell them you did it,” Nyx said. She let out a long breath. Binyamin hadn’t been the woman in prison she’d thought she’d been, then. She hadn’t been the woman Nyx needed to repent for, just someone caught in the crossfire.

  Rasim raised her gun.

  “Anyone ever tell you bel dames are hard to kill?” Nyx said.

  “You aren’t a bel dame.”

  “No,” Nyx said, “but unlike you, I used to be. And they taught me something there.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t talk too long,” Nyx said.

  The bullet took Rasim between the shoulder blades. She slammed into the table.

  Nyx hustled in and bound her hands behind her with sticky bands from her pack.

  “Anneke?” Nyx yelled. No answer. If it was Anneke, she was early.

  Nyx looked around the edges of the room. It wasn’t sealed up top. Someone could have squatted on the floor above and gotten a shot through the gap between the floor and the wall.

  Rasim whined. The bullet hadn’t hit anything vital; looked like it just missed her spine, too. “Lucky girl,” Nyx said.

  “Anneke?” Nyx called.

  “Here, boss,” Anneke said. She slithered down from the floor above, coming in from some retrofitted venting shaft. Her gun was slung over her shoulder.

  “You’re early,” Nyx said.

  “Couldn’t help firing after that line,” Anneke said. “Too perfect. You know, better early than late.”

  “Where are the boys?”

  “Downstairs clearing out the dogs,” she said.

  “Early,” Nyx muttered.

  “You get what you wanted?” Anneke said.

  “Pretty much,” Nyx said. “Not what I thought it was.”

  “Good, then,” Anneke said.

  Nyx took Rasim by the hair. “We need to diffuse those bombs, Rasim. Where’s the codes?”

  “I don’t have them,” she said. “You know how they work? They need to be sealed in living flesh to survive. More than a few moments outside of living tissue, and they disintegrate. It’s why shifters make such good triggers.”

  “I got it,” Nyx said. “Where are they?” She pointed the scattergun at her chest. “I’m happy to cut you up into pieces to find them. We were nice with the first bullet.”

  “They’re not inside me,” she said.

  Nyx heard noise on the stairs. Khos, Taite, and Rhys walked up. Nyx didn’t look at Rhys. She expected the bakkie ride over hadn’t been very comfortable with bruised ribs.

  “Then I’ll cut up all your friends,” Nyx told Rasim.

  “No,” she said. “They’re inside your friend.”

  “What?”

  Rasim bent her head to Khos. “Your friend, who met our friend Hadjara for a discreet transaction.”

  Khos’s eyes widened. “What’s she saying?”

  “You a dog runner?” Nyx said.

  “A what?” he said.

  “Where is it on him?” Nyx said.

  “He won’t live through you taking it out,” Rasim said. “It’s wrapped around his heart.”

  The heart. That’s what she was doing, fucking with them and the heart. “Yeah?” Nyx said. “The fuck do I care about one dog? Lot more people going to die if he lives.”

  “Now, wait—” Khos said.

  “Who will die, Nyxnissa?” Rasim said. “The factories are empty. We only destroy empty factories. What you’re saying is the life of one man is worth less than the weapons that will go on to kill thousands, hundreds of thousands, of men. Is that true?”

  Nyx spit sen. “I fucking hate revolutionaries,” she said. “I liked this better when you were just getting paid to frame me.”

  “Could we get back to talking about this thing in my heart?” Khos said, voice rising. “Hadjara said that injection was—”

  “What, something easily removable?” Rasim said. “It’s up to the two of you now. You want to stop the destruction of a few weapons? You get out your knife and you kill this man.”

  Nyx pulled a big knife from the sheathe at her hip. “You forget who I am? What I do?”

  “Not at all,” Rasim said. “I trained to do what you do, remember?”

  “And gave it up,” Nyx said. “You quit because you have no stomach for blood. When you figured out the sort of sacrifices you have to make, you turned coward. It wasn’t about losing your sister at all.”

  “Was it cowardly?” Rasim said. “Is it cowardly to do what the system expects of you, or cowardly to go along with it?”

  “You tell me,” Nyx said, “you’re the one framing an innocent person for blowing up factories.”

  “Oh, you’re not innocent, Nyxnissa so Dasheem.”

  “Get her out of here,” Nyx said to Anneke.

  “Sure thing, boss,” Anneke said, and tugged at Rasim’s restraints. “You want me to kill her?”

  “Not until I have the code,” Nyx said.

  “Now, wait a minute—” Khos said, holding up his big hands.

  When Rasim and Anneke left the room, Nyx hefted her blade.

  “Nyx,” Rhys said, quietly, but she pretended not to hear him.

  Khos scrambled back, hands still raised, until he pressed against the wall. Odd thing, she thought, that a man so big retreated without a serious tussle.

  “They’re just weapons,” Khos said. “You wouldn’t kill me on her word. Hadjara had me run a job, a simple ferrying job. I thought I’d finished it before we left Punjai.”

  “I’m doing a job, too,” she said.

  “You don’t need to do this,” Rhys said. He did not move from where he stood, but his voice rolled over her, warm and smooth as silk.

  “I took a job,” she said. “I finish my jobs.”

  “It’s not a note,” Rhys said, “and you aren’t being paid for it. It’s just weapons, Nyx. She was a liar trying to frame you for this!”

  “The weapons support
the war. The war is Nasheen.”

  “Nasheen is more than the war,” Rhys said.

  Khos’s eyes were big. His gaze moved rapidly from Rhys to Nyx and back again.

  Her fist tightened on the blade. “I have a job,” she said.

  “You never took the job,” Rhys said. He came up beside her, speaking softly. “We can walk away. It’s not our fight. We don’t owe it anything. So some factories blow up. What’s that matter?”

  She twisted the knife at Rhys and lunged for his throat. She pressed the blade there. “Chenjan,” she spat. “You would say some catshit thing like that. Make us vulnerable. Move in with some army.”

  “I’m not your enemy,” Rhys said.

  “The whole world’s my enemy,” she said.

  “I’m not,” he said. He swallowed, and she saw his skin ripple against the blade.

  How many dark throats like his had she cut? Dozens, certainly. Hundreds? No, she was not at the front that long. But a lot. Too many. He was just another body. Another bag of Chenjan blood. Like Khos, he was a foreign man, and foreign men were disposable. No one would miss them. She’d be doing the world a favor. Her head swam. Flashbacks. Irrational behavior. Fuck, was she losing her shit again? Deep breath. Count back. Where the fuck was she?

  “Nyx?”

  She snarled something at him, she wasn’t even sure what, and pressed her forearm against his chest, pinning him to the wall.

  His gaze darted to Khos, and Nyx said, “You think about moving, dog-man, and I’ll castrate you.”

  “Nyx,” Rhys said, “it’s not a job. There’s no honor in it.”

  She huffed out a long breath.

  Too many throats.

  My life for a thousand, she had sworn. Not a thousand lives for mine.

  Nyx released him. Her body surged with adrenaline. She let out another breath, and turned so neither man could see her hand tremble as she sheathed her knife. She hocked the rest of her sen onto the floor.

  “Fuck this place,” she said. “I have shit to do.” She smoothed back her hair and wiped the sweat from her face. She glanced back at the men, irritated. “Are you coming or not?”

  She did not look at their faces, because she did not want to know what was there.

  They returned Rasim to her family with little fanfare.

  “You had a bounty on her, right?” Nyx said. “I want the bounty, and a land grant for a house in Mushirah, and you can do what the fuck you want with her and I won’t tell anyone she’s responsible for blowing up those six factories that are filling the sky with shit right now.”