by Leahy, R. J.
“But you’re with this… resistance. How can you be with the resistance and also be with me?”
“I’m not with the resistance.”
“Sure you are. That’s why you brought the girl to me. You used me to help them.”
“No.”
“Faisal; Faisal, it’s all right. Everyone uses everyone else. It’s the way of the world. Besides, I wanted to meet her. I ain’t mad.”
“Devon, I swear…”
Devon picks up the black book. “Unfortunately, we still have a problem. You see Faisal, no man can have two masters. It says so right here. And now that I think about it, you also work for the Blueshirts, so that kind of makes for three masters.”
“I don’t…”
“Which make me wonder, a man who is willing to serve three masters might just be willing to work for a fourth.” Devon grins. “What about it Faisal, you got another master? Maybe one wearing a black trench coat?”
The hesitation is almost imperceptible. Almost. But if I caught it, so did Devon. “No. No, of course not. Devon…”
He never finishes the sentence. Devon lifts the pistol and fires. The shot penetrates Faisal just above the right eye, the bullet blowing through the back of his skull and splintering the concrete wall a few feet from me.
Abby and Pen both scream as Faisal’s body falls back and crumples on the floor.
“Shhh...” Devon says, the gun still in his right hand. “No reason to get upset. I ain’t gonna hurt you.”
Both women stare in horror at the dead body. Pen is visibly shaking.
“Don’t worry about him. I got guys like him by the dozen. Now then, what were we talking about? Oh, right, the guns. Let’s not quibble, eh? I’m a reasonable man. How about you sell me fifteen weapons and oh, ten thousand rounds of ammunition. And hey, I’m paying top dollar here, so I expect quality merchandise.” He touches Pen’s hair, drawing it gently away from her face. “In the meantime, just to show you how much protection Devon can offer to you and yours, your little sister here will stay with me as my personal guest.”
Abby looks at him with barely controlled rage. “You son-of-a-bitch.”
“You said this was for your soul,” Pen says, her voice cracking.
“It was!” Devon screams. He thrusts his face in front of hers, his cheeks flushed, spittle flying as he speaks. “Look at her. She’s standing here, alive and breathing. If not for me, this angel would be burning in hell right now!”
He draws back and fishes around in his robes before pulling out the silver box and snorting a large mound of dust. He coughs and chokes before addressing them again, his voice calmer. “My soul is satisfied, but I got business needs too.”
He snaps his fingers and one of his men jumps forward. He points to Abby. “Take the Blueshirt’s vehicle and get her to wherever she wants to go.”
I figure this is a good a time as any and step out from the shadows. “Ahem.”
Devon spins toward me, gun drawn, eyes wild, as all heads turn my way.
I hold up my hands.
“What are you still doing here?” he asks.
In answer, I reached for the doorknob and yank on it, showing it’s still locked. I shrug.
He lowers his gun and curses under his breath, then looks around in dismay at his men who are doing their best to look preoccupied.
“What am I paying you people for?” he yells.
Not surprisingly, no one answers.
I move to Abby and Pen. Pen is shaking. She looks like she wants to say something to me, but I give her a subtle shake of my head. “As long as you’re sending someone out, think I could catch a ride?” I ask.
But Devon’s concentration is elsewhere. He’s scratching the side of his head with the barrel of the gun and frowning at the growing pool of blood staining his carpet. “Huh? Yeah, yeah, ok. Take him too,” he says, to no one in particular.
EIGHT
Abby is quiet in the back of Faisal’s van, her expression grim. She tells the driver to take her to the hundred and twenty-first precinct; tells him she’ll give him further instructions when they get there. He grumbles. The one twenty-one is north of here, almost to the Delphi quarter. Getting back to Devon’s from there before curfew will be cutting it close, but he doesn’t argue. The last thing he wants to do is risk Devon’s anger again. No one asks where I want to go.
The back of the van is for prisoners, windowless, with a bench seat and metal rings bolted to the floor for attaching handcuffs. Wire mesh separates us from the driver. Pedestrian traffic is sparse. It’s almost curfew and many shops closed early anyway because of the riots. Through the windshield, I can still make out Counselors on the corners, closely examining the stragglers racing home to beat the scanners. No one gives the van so much as a passing glance.
At one corner, two Blueshirts are wailing away at a man lying on the ground, his arms raised in a desperate attempt to block the blows, his face is covered in blood. A Counselor stands nearby, watching impassively. The few pedestrians still on the street look away from the beating as they pass. No time even for idle curiosity. The scanners are flashing.
We cross into the one twenty-one and Abby gives further directions: right; left; stop here. The van stops in front of the lone building on a street lined with piles of rubble on either side: businesses and apartment complexes that have been razed, but whose wreckage hasn’t yet been hauled away. A fading sign proclaims that this is the North-Central People’s Hospital.
The driver checks to make sure the street is clear, then runs around the back and opens the doors, pulling us out. A second later we’re watching tail lights as he speeds back to Devon’s nest.
Abby finally acknowledges me. Her face is placid, her voice even, but there’s smoldering anger behind her eyes. “Did you know what was going to happen back there?”
“No. Any more than I knew you were smuggling weapons.”
“I don’t know anything about any guns.”
“All right.”
“I need you to believe me.” Something in her tone has changed; softened.
“Then I believe you.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. I’m not very complicated, remember?”
A pause, then a nod toward the hospital: “This is the new headquarters of the resistance. They moved here after I was captured. Kingston will be inside. If they are smuggling weapons, then he’ll know where they are.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I need your help.” Another silence and for the first time since the ovens, her eyes plead with me. “Will you help me?”
Of course I’m going to help her. I’ve known it since the instant Faisal was killed. It’s why I went in the van. It’s why I’m standing here on this street across from the leader of the resistance, instead of listening to my gut and running as fast and as far as I can. I’ll help her because in saving her, I’m saving Pen, and I have to save Pen. I just don’t know why. “Yeah, I’ll help you,” I say. “But Kingston may not like my methods.”
“Fuck Kingston.”
“Not the method I’m thinking of. Besides, isn’t he your boss?”
“It isn’t like that. What we’ve put together is a congress of the people; there is no single leader. Over the last year he and I have worked together to grow the movement. His responsibility is raising money, mine is recruitment. We work as a team.”
“I don’t think so.”
She frowns. “What do you mean?”
“An organization can have two heads only so long as one of them is dead. If he controls the money, then he’s the head.”
Her face flushes. I’ve hurt her pride. “Before I came into this they were nothing, a few dozen people at most. I’m the one who got the tribes to sit next to one another, to work together. The quarters have all rallied around me. Me.”
“Sorry Abby, but that wasn’t you, that was the Angel of the City.”
“Same thing.”
“No. Maybe they used your pedigree in the beginning, but the Angel stopped being you some time ago. It’s an icon now, an image, something to be manipulated and controlled. Who came up with the idea in the first place, you or Kingston?”
“Neither. It didn’t come from inside the organization. It just sort of happened.”
That’s what Pen said, that Kingston had simply found the fliers circulating in the city. “Things like that don’t just happen. Someone started those rumors and whoever it was, they had their own reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“I have no idea and neither do you. That alone should worry you.”
The hospital doesn’t look all that different from the rubble surrounding it. The exterior of the building consists of crumbling concrete and rusting, exposed metal. Inside it isn’t much better. Only a few patients occupy the waiting room. Most are huddled together on two rows of wooden benches. A kerosene space heater glows red on the floor in front of them. One man, ancient and withered, sits apart. A heavyset nurse in white uniform mans the front desk in the lobby.
“Dr. Kingston, please,” Abby says.
“I’m sorry, but we have no one on staff by that name.”
“Please tell him Abby is here,” she says, ignoring the remark.
The nurse hesitates for a moment, then turns and disappears behind a set of swinging doors.
We wait in silence, listening to the coughs and groans of the patients across from us. The man sitting apart catches my attention and signals me over. He’s wearing rags, his hands visibly shaking in his lap. As I near, I see a tattoo on his neck, peeking out from under his upturned collar. Three wide black bars, the mark of an ex-con.
“Don’t worry, I ain’t sick,” he says as I sit next to him. “I just come in here to get warm.”
A young woman nursing a child coughs several times.
“Not sick yet,” I say. “This isn’t exactly the healthiest place to pass the time.”
“Like I fucking care.”
“What can I do for you, old-timer?”
He smiles a toothless grin. “You wouldn’t have a drink on you, would you? Just a nip, to keep out the cold?”
I reach into my jacket and pull out the flask.
“Ah, you’re a life-saver.” He pops the cap and tips it back.
“What’d they get you on?” I ask, nodding at the tat.
He pulls the flask from his lips and glares at me, tugging on his collar to cover the bars, but I’m not put off. When I don’t back down, he shrugs. “Grand theft. I found a ring on the street in the Delphi quarter. I had a wife, three kids. Hadn’t worked in months, so I hocked it instead of turning it in to Counselors. Bastards gave me twenty in the Westside.”
I check his hands: gnarled and broken, nails almost black, the hands of a man who’s worked the land hard for twenty years. I lean forward and whisper in his ear. “Then you know.”
He looks away; takes another swig and wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. “I don’t know shit.”
“Is it dead yet?”
His head snaps around, his eyes angry. “Don’t ask me no questions, boy. I’m out and I aim to stay out.”
“Just making conversation.”
“Like hell.” He lowers his voice to match mine. “Whatever you think you know, you best forget it.”
I ask again. “Is it dead?”
He glares. “Damn near. Now leave me be. Ain’t nothing can be done about it anyway.”
The swinging doors creak open and the nurse reappears.
I reach for the flask but before I can grasp it, he spits into it and grins back at me.
“Please, keep it,” I tell him and return to Abby.
The nurse nods tersely. “Follow me.”
We’re led through the doors along a hallway. Most of the ceiling lights aren’t working and the few that are, flicker. Halfway down the hall we go through a doorway and take steps leading down. The steps are even dimmer than the rest of the place. When we exit, we’re in the basement. The nurse leads us down another short hallway to another set of double doors and presses a square button on the wall. The doors swing open and a man is waiting for us. He smiles when he sees Abby but it vanishes when he sees me. I don’t take it personally as I’m too busy staring at the shiny new assault rifle in his hands. I’m still trying not to take it personally when he aims the weapon in my direction.
“Who is this?” the man asks.
“I need to see Kingston,” Abby answers.
“I can’t let him in. You had no right to compromise this place by bringing an outsider.”
“He’s the one who broke me out of the One Twenty Seven. And don’t lecture me about risk, Jace. Pen’s been taken.”
He hesitates, but finally nods and indicates for us to go ahead. Abby leads the way and he takes up the rear with the rifle, I’m sure, still aimed at my back. We go around a large rounded desk to another door. It leads into a large room, much better lit. A few desks and chairs; one filing cabinet. More industrial lights hang from the ceiling. There’s the sound of a dull rhythmic thumping; somewhere a slowly rotating ventilation fan is bringing in fresh air.
Two people are in the room when we enter: a woman roughly Abby’s age bent over the filing cabinet and a man, sitting behind the desk.
“We need to talk,” Abby says.
The man looks quickly between the two of us and seems at least as unhappy to see me as Jace was. “Who is this?”
I’m not sure what I was expecting, maybe some delusional old man; a revolutionary crackpot whose own days are coming to an end and who has no compunction about recruiting others to die along with him in some misguided attempt at glory. But the man at the desk is younger than I am; late twenties at best. He’s unshaven, with dark, intense eyes and a thick crop of hair, unmolested by comb or brush. His khaki shirt is open to mid chest; giant sweat stains bleed under each arm.
“This is the man who got me out of the station,” Abby says.
Two forearm crutches lean against the wall. He reaches for them and slips his arms in, pulling himself off the chair. Swinging his legs with each step, he comes around the desk to face me. “I see. Then I suppose I have you to thank for bringing Abby back to us. I’m grateful.”
“Happy to help. Nice place you got here.”
“This was the old radiology section of the hospital.” He uses one of his braces to tap the wall. “Leaded. We’re still in the process of moving in. Naturally, we had to abandon our old headquarters after Abby was captured, as a security measure. Secrecy is extremely important, as I’m sure you can appreciate.” He directs the last statement at Abby.
“Devon Blaze has Pen,” she says and quickly relates the events of the last few hours.
He looks disgusted. “You should never have gone there. At least you should have talked to me first. I don’t care if he did help in your escape. It was too risky.”
“He didn’t help, he set it up,” I say. “Without him, I’m not in, which means right now Abby would be either dead or enjoying the gentle caresses of a Counselor interrogation session, seeing as how your resistance wasn’t going to lift a finger for her.”
He glares at me. “We’re freedom fighters, not mercenaries. My heart ached for Abby, but we didn’t have anyone with your particular... skills.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were stealing guns from the Ministry?” Abby asks.
Kingston’s face, which wasn’t all that ruddy to begin with, goes paler. His gaze flits between Abby and me.
A general rule of espionage is that for every person in on a secret, the risk of that secret being exposed increases by a factor of ten. Now he not only has Devon to worry about, but me as well.
“Stealing?” he says. “The Ministry’s weapons, like everything else in the city, belong to the people. Your function is recruitment; this doesn’t concern you.”
“Doesn’t concern me? You’re changing the resistance from a peaceful uprising of the people into a terrorist or
ganization. You had no right to do this without my knowledge.”
“Your knowledge? Don’t tell me you’re starting to believe your own propaganda? You don’t run this organization, I do. You’re just a symbol on a wall.”
Her head snaps back imperceptivity—a millimeter, no more. But the blow struck home.
“You want a popular uprising against the government?” he continues. “You want to feed the starving poor? Well how do you think that’s going to happen? Wake up, Abby. There’s no such thing as a peaceful revolution. There never has been.”
She pulls up one corner of her mouth in an attempt at a sarcastic smirk, but she isn’t fooling anyone. The blow hurt. The flush of her cheeks gives her away. “Is that all you think I am?” she asks. “A symbol on a wall?”
He ignores her and turns to me. “What exactly does he want?”
“Fifteen rifles and ten thousand rounds of ammunition.”
His eyes widen and for a second he’s apoplectic. “That’s a third of all the weapons we have,” he finally sputters. “He’s out of his mind.”
“There’s been talk. But I’d give him the guns anyway.”
“No. Not if I had five times as many. The man is a drug dealer and a pimp, not to mention a cold-blooded killer. His involvement in all of this was unauthorized and I won’t be blackmailed into giving up what we’ve fought so hard to get. This was all Faisal’s idea. Where is Faisal anyway?” he asks. “Why isn’t he here with you?”
“He found driving difficult with the back of his head blown off.”
Kingston glances quickly to Abby, who only closes her eyes and nods. He struggles back to his chair before falling heavily into it and slamming a crutch against the top of the desk. “Dammit! This proves my point about Devon.”
“Yes it does, but we’re talking about Pen,” I say.
“There’s nothing I can do.”
“Sure there is. Give him what he wants.”
“The man is a psychopath.”
“And you’re a gun-runner and I’m a thief. No offense, but sanctimony seems a little out of place given the present company.”
He scowls. “Gun-running, is that all you think this is about? The guns are only a means to an end, the first step in a plan to wrest power from the Ministry and give it back to the people, where it belongs.”