But I knew that quote.
I’d heard it come from my husband’s lips, and I knew who taught it to him.
Wiping my face angrily with a hand, I stepped away from her.
Reluctantly, she released me.
“What do you want from me?” I said again.
She inhaled a breath, as if to compose herself. After looking at me for another moment, she sighed, the sound carried from both of us by wind.
I felt a pulse of grief leave her light, but from further away now.
“Alyson,” she said. “I didn’t only leave the Displacement Lists there for you. I wrote them. Or, I should say––I transcribed them. About a hundred years ago, they came to me non-stop. For months. It was agony. I wrote them down, everything. I made only two copies.”
I stared at her.
My mind fought to make sense of this information, even as she gave a helpless shrug, shifting her head so that the wind would blow her hair out of her face, pulling and tugging it in lengths behind her back.
She was beautiful. Beautiful and soft, and nothing like me, no matter how much our features might mirror one another.
No wonder Revik looked at her.
I saw her flinch.
Her green eyes shifted to mine.
“I am offering to take your people somewhere safe,” she said. “Somewhere on land, away from Shadow and his quarantine cities. Somewhere safe. This is something I can do for you now. Something you cannot do yourself. Not yet.”
When I looked at her, fighting the anger that wanted to course back through my light, I saw her mouth firm. Those green eyes fixed on me, holding a harder steel.
“Allie,” she said, her voice more gentle that time, despite her expression. “The ship won’t be safe for you for very much longer.”
Hesitating, she gauged my expression carefully.
“It won’t be safe for Lily.” Her eyes locked on mine. Firm, uncompromising. “Once you do what you intend to do to both of them, he will come for you. It is only a matter of time.”
Silence fell between us, apart from the blowing wind.
Looking at her face, at those clear, light-filled eyes, I believed her.
I believed her, and I almost hated her for it.
33
MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS, PART 2
DANIELLA ANITA (“DANTE”) Vasquez stared at a name on the human Displacement List, frowning.
She’d never read this segment of the list before.
That, or she’d missed it somehow––skimmed over it during one of their late-night sessions fueled by sugar, chemical snack foods, and caffeine.
Now she stared at the list of names written across the virtual landscape where she worked––a landscape she’d designed herself and that consisted of a lot of physics-impossible buildings so tall they nearly met in the sky, as well as flying dinosaurs, pink snow falling from purple clouds, sunsets pretty much any time of day, talking robots.
Dante looked through all that to the three-dimensional, bright-orange text (since orange was currently her favorite color) and focused on a single name.
Dante stared at the name, lips pursed.
Vikram must have been watching her.
“What is it, cousin?” he asked gently.
Dante shifted her focus.
As she did, the virtual landscape receded, revealing the much more drab and uninteresting tech room that surrounded her in reality. Filled with bolted-down, semi-organic tables equipped with built-in screens and dead metal chairs, the twenty-by-ten room smelled, and not only of ocean air and rust. Human and seer smells could be overpowering at times, especially during major op planning, where a lot of them worked fifteen, twenty hours in a stretch.
Apart from the work stations, the rest was just, well––stuff.
Tech stuff, mostly.
Semi-organic machines, dead-metal wires, tubs of jellies or “squids,” as the comp-head seers called full-organic circuits. Someone even shoved a dented cabinet of guns and ammunition in one corner, even though it stuck out awkwardly and got in everyone’s way. Armor-piercing vests, life vests and rafts were stacked on top of that same cabinet in off-kilter piles.
Some stuff didn’t exactly fall into the “practical” or “tech” bucket.
Ping pong sets lay on various desks, for when the seer and human techs got bored and played across the length of tables. A small refrigerator crouched in the corner filled with snacks (junk food, mostly, and things with a lot of caffeine).
Plastic dinosaurs lay on desks, or stuck out from where they’d been glued to monitors. Miniature cars littered the floor from when they’d built racing tracks out of old tubing. A plastic beach ball someone found during a shore excursion and brought in here to be annoying sat next to the refrigerator. A rack of long trays sat under grow lights, part of an experiment the Vik-man and a few others had going, trying to grow squids by splicing clones from high-functioning organics with organic matter culled from dead animals.
That last thing made the room stink even more than seer sweat.
Dante was used to the smells, so they didn’t really bother her, but whenever she left for any amount of time and came back, she always got a shock when that first cloud of squid and sweat stink hit her nose as she walked through the door.
Most non-techs complained about it every time they had to come in here for any reason. Dante was used to techs being viewed with various combinations of disdain, annoyance, incomprehension, fear and awe, though.
The same was pretty true in the human world.
Still, in this case, the normies had a point. Thinking about the squids fermenting in that tank, Dante wrinkled her nose, glancing up at the ventilation fans.
“Do not dodge me, cousin,” Vikram scolded. “Something is bothering you. I would prefer not to read it out of your light.”
Dante folded her arms, facing him.
“You didn’t tell me my mom was on the List,” she said, jutting her chin. “Is that why you sent Jax and Loki and all those guys to go look for her in Queens?”
Vikram’s eyes went blank.
They went so blank, Dante realized he had no idea what she was talking about.
She unfolded her arms, losing some of her defensiveness. “You really didn’t know about that? About her being on the List?”
Vikram shook his head, slowly, his expression pinched.
He rose to his feet, walking to her. Realizing he wanted to see for himself, she transferred the data she’d been looking at––essentially a scanned version of the human List––to the monitor on the table nearest to where she stood.
She often stood when she worked, a nervous habit they all seemed to have gotten used to, since they’d finally stopped telling her to relax. She liked to pace and think, not sit so that her brain fuzzed out and went numb, along with her ass.
“Are you sure about this?” Vikram said, his voice reflecting that worry. “We looked for her name, cousin. We checked, months ago.”
Dante felt her shoulders relax for real.
“Marriage, Holmes,” she said, a little impatient.
“What?” He looked at her, his violet eyes showing bewilderment.
“You didn’t look under her maiden name, did you?” Dante pointed at one of the names glowing in orange type on the monitor. “She took my dad’s name when she got married, Vik. Her name wasn’t ‘Gina Vasquez’ when she was born. She was Gina Justicia Black. That was my grandfather’s name. He was Cherokee Indian or something.”
“Not Indian,” Vikram said, shaking a finger at her. “Native American. Or indigenes. There are better words for this, cousin.”
Dante rolled her eyes. “Don’t get tetchy with me. You’re not ‘Indian’ either, cuz, no matter where you were born.”
Vikram glanced over at that, then smiled, clicking, as if in spite of himself.
“Fair enough,” he said. “But this…” He shook his finger at her, waggling his head, and suddenly looking much more East Indian than seer. “This
is still inaccurate, cousin.”
She snorted a laugh. “Got it.”
His eyes returned to the monitor.
“She’s dead, right?” Dante said, into the silence. “That’s why you guys haven’t said anything to me. You found her, and she’s dead.”
Vikram looked up, his eyes widening in shock.
“No!” he said hurriedly. “No, cousin! No! Quite the contrary! She is very much alive. Has no one told you? They are coming back today.” He checked the time piece in the corner of the screen. “…Any minute, in fact.”
Dante stared, unfolding her arms. “What?”
Vikram’s voice and expression grew contrite. “I am so very sorry, my beautiful cousin. I really thought they had informed you, or I would have reassured you earlier––”
Behind him, Jaden let out an irritated and incredulous snort.
Dante and Vikram both turned.
The blue-eyed human gave Vikram an openly annoyed look.
“Nice job, asshole,” he said. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”
“What?” Vikram’s accent sounded very East Indian again. “What does that mean?”
“A surprise. Get it? A surprise. They were supposed to call me when they got in, and I was supposed to come up with some excuse to bring Dante up on deck and surprise her. That’s why they didn’t tell her… jackass.”
Looking between the two of them, as if sensing suddenly that the idea wasn’t as cool as he’d initially thought, Jaden sat up straighter, folding his arms.
“Don’t look at me!” he said, defensive. “It wasn’t my idea. It was Chinja and Neela. They were going to record both of your reactions and everything. I think they were kind of blown away to have found her alive. Everyone’s psyched to see the reunion.”
Dante and Vikram continued to frown in his direction.
Then Dante looked at Vikram.
“What kind of stupid shit is this?” she said. “They didn’t tell me my mom was alive, because they wanted to record me having a heart attack after they brought her on deck, with me thinking she was dead?” Her frown deepened. “What the fuck did they tell my mom? Because if they told her I was dead or something, she’s going to kick the living shit out of all of you.”
There was a silence where Jaden just stared at her, blank.
Exhaling in anger, Dante stomped towards the door of the room, hands clenched. As she passed his work station, Jaden held up a hand, his voice apologetic.
“Hey, Dante… sorry. It really wasn’t my idea.”
Ignoring him, she jerked open the metal door. She was already fighting tears, but managed to keep them back until she got to the head––what everyone here called toilets––after squeezing through an oval door a few down from the tech room.
Sitting on the downed toilet seat in her jeans, she locked the door and folded her arms over legs before she let herself cry.
“Assholes,” she muttered, resting her forehead on her arms.
DANTE DIDN’T GO up on deck when the proximity alarm went off.
She didn’t want to go up there and get her stupid picture taken like some kind of afternoon feed special where everyone is supposed to boo-hoo and hug––in other words, everything corny and stupid and so not Dante or her mom. She didn’t want the others to ooh and ahh over her, or see her mom looking fucked up from whatever bad things had happened to her.
She didn’t want to see all the seers treat her mom weird.
She was worried they might not be nice to her mom. They were cool to Dante herself because she knew tech stuff. What if they didn’t see her mom as particularly “useful?”
But really, it didn’t fucking matter how they saw her mom.
She didn’t want to see it, is all, if it turned out she was wrong about her seer friends––if it turned out they weren’t the people she thought they were. She knew she’d be slamming pissed if any of them acted crappy to her mom, especially after all of them––Dante included––left her behind in that nightmare in Queens. She’d be belching smoke and mad-eye, just like in those comics Jaden liked.
She didn’t want her new friends seeing her old life like it was nothing.
She didn’t want to end up hating them.
Dante pictured her mom coming out of the ‘copter scared, yelling about stuff, thinking they were all just icers fucking with her head. Her mom would’ve been reading feeds and looking at images for months now, seeing all the crazy shit going down all over the world. She’d have seen razor-wire castles run by wired-up overlords selling kids younger than Dante and Pip for tracers and water and weed and whatever else.
Worse, what if the same thing happened to her mom? What if bad things happened to her, things she couldn’t recover from? What if her mom was broken somehow?
Kids were currency over there, but so were women and girls.
Dante wasn’t stupid. Her mom might be old, but she was hot-old, not fat and frumpy old. All her comp-nerd guy pals got stupid and stutter-y around Dante’s mom, like, the instant they hit puberty. Anyway, old or ugly might not even matter anymore.
If her mom survived, she would have seen some seriously bad shit once the quarantine went into place in Manhattan.
Those icers went back, though. They’d gone back there, looking for her mom, knowing they’d probably never find her. Knowing she was probably dead. They hadn’t even known her name was on the List, but they’d gone anyway.
They’d done it for her––Dante.
Vikram must have been behind that.
It had to be the Vik-man, although she knew he’d never admit it. He must have asked the Bridge or Sword or both of them for approval. They must have said yes, or it wouldn’t have happened––Dante knew that, since she knew how things worked here. Some part of her stayed suspicious and pissed off, anyway, looking for a trick.
She didn’t want to think about the last time she’d seen her mom.
They got in a big, stupid, drag-down fight. Dante remembered all of it, every word. She’d yelled at her mom by the sink, in that tiny, puke-yellow kitchen with the smoke-stained curtains and dented, white-painted cabinets.
She said a lot of shit that morning––a lot of really bad shit.
Of course, her mom started it. Her mom heard her get up at like six a.m. and crawled out of bed to confront her before she could get out the door. Her mom knew she was up to no good, like she always seemed to know.
That damned sixth sense mother thing––she just knew. She knew she was going out with Pip and Mavis to do something illegal, and tried to stop her from leaving.
She yelled about how Dante’d already been picked up by the Feds once, for her “computer crap.” She brought up that icer who interrogated her, the fact that she’d nearly destroyed her future and any chance of getting a job.
Dante derailed everything her mom threw at her.
She’d called her a “middle-aged, has-been hootch” who thought she was kidding someone, sneaking in at 2am from her “dates” with losers she met in shitty neighborhood bars.
Thinking about that now, Dante felt her stomach wrench in smaller and tighter knots, until she could barely breathe.
Of course, she couldn’t hide from those icers forever.
They found her, just like she knew they would.
She got hit with bucketloads of shitty “concern” when she wouldn’t come upstairs, and later, when she wouldn’t come out of the head or answer anyone who tried to talk to her through the door. They tried sweet-talking her, tough-talking her, reasoning with her.
They tried sending light things that screwed with her head and her mood.
They tried guilting her about how bad her mom wanted to see her.
Her mom never came, though.
Vik never came, either.
Tenzi came. Mika came. Neela, Anale and Illeg came. Jax came later, when Dante could tell it was getting dark out and her stomach was starting to hurt. She just wanted them all to go away. She was embarrassed and pissed off and just wanted
them all to leave her alone.
Not long after she thought that loudly enough, they did.
The hallway outside the head got really quiet.
Another hour or so after that, Dante couldn’t stand it anymore.
She was hungry, and it was slowly sinking in that she couldn’t stay in there forever, and that her mother really wasn’t coming for her. She wished she was an icer and could yell at her mom in her head. Anale told her that her mom wanted to see her, but that started to feel like bullshit, too. So Dante left the head, and when she saw no one in the hall, she shoved her hands in her pockets and thought loudly at the Vik-man, knowing somehow that he was probably still around, somewhere, since he was the only one who didn’t come knock on the head door.
Where is she, Vik? she thought loudly.
Hooking her link around her ear, she opened the channel when no one answered, and pinged him that way.
He sounded strange when he picked up––almost like, stern.
Very unlike the Vik-man, even apart from the colorless avatar he showed her, a bare stick figure drawn with white light over a black background. Dante knew icers were kind of weird about family and respect to elders so maybe it was something like that. Maybe she’d actually managed to get the Vik-man pissed off at her.
“What is it you need from me, cousin?” Vikram said.
“Where’s my mom?”
There was a silence.
His virtual avatar shrugged.
“I can take you, cousin,” he said. “Or I can tell you. Which do you prefer?”
“Has she been asking about me?”
There was another silence.
That one was thicker, somehow.
“Vik.” She frowned, chewing a cuticle on her thumb. “Did she ask about me, or not?”
“You know full well she has been asking about you!” he burst out, his voice openly angry. “What are you doing, cousin? You know you hurt her very much! Very, very much! And all of the seers who brought her back here for you! You hurt all of them!”
That time, Dante fell silent.
She tasted blood and realized she’d bitten her thumb hard enough to break the skin. Wiping her lips, she frowned, wiping her bleeding thumb on her jeans.
Prophet: Bridge & Sword Page 35