by Wren Weston
Tristan grabbed Toxic’s shoulder at the foot of the stairs. The group paused, peering through the green glow at the front door. One of the blackcoats grunted and kicked the wood. The chains strung through the handle clinked and thumped, holding the door in place. A thin beam of light shot through the cracks in the frame, shifting through the room like a searchlight.
The pigeons stopped cooing. Wings fluttered and slapped. New pools of white and gray struck the floor.
“Do we have a master key?” said a woman behind the door, her voice hard, yet strangely childish.
“We have a bolt cutter in the back of the truck.” Her partner snickered, words already shifting pitch as she stepped away to retrieve it.
Tristan turned Toxic toward the kitchens and gave her a shove, spurring the group toward the side exit. The green light went out behind them mid-flight as Tristan tucked the glow stick into his coat pocket.
Another rolled in the kitchen, back and forth near Frank’s body. There wasn’t enough light for Lila to see if he was breathing.
Toxic glanced back at Lila, jaw slack, her brown eyes wide and staring. She winced as one of the frustrated women kicked at the restaurant’s front doors.
Dixon brushed Toxic back, raised his scarf over his nose and mouth, and stepped over his comrade.
Pushing open the kitchen door, he functioned as the group’s canary, freezing in place almost immediately, telegraphing what was in the alley. His gun fell to the ground at his feet, and his hands shot into the air, two fingers raised.
Two fingers. Two people waiting.
Toxic didn’t care. It woke something in the young woman, seeing a glimpse of the world, and that something didn’t pay attention to Dixon’s raised arms.
Lila lunged for her, fiercely clasping one electric-blue sleeve, but it was yanked free of her fingers, the fabric burning her skin as it slipped through.
Toxic ran the last few steps toward freedom and bumped into Dixon on the way out.
There was a puff of air.
Toxic stumbled, and Lila spied the small black dart in her neck.
Dixon grabbed Toxic and helped her slide to the ground unharmed.
Tristan took advantage of the distraction. Scarf masking his face, he burst through the door and charged. Lila drew her Colt and snaked around the door behind him. Two blackcoats, a male and female, swiveled away from Dixon to the new threat.
Tristan barreled toward them with the force of a bullet train.
Lila hid behind the door and fired a dart into the woman’s neck while Tristan knocked her partner onto his back. The man struggled to breathe as he hit the ground, and Tristan shot him with a dart.
“Diana to Command, send reinforcements to Chaucer’s Ghost,” his radio called out as Lila and Tristan dragged the sleeping blackcoats away from the truck. While they worked, Dixon tossed Frank over his shoulder and placed him in the truck bed. Tristan slid Toxic in after him.
The bundle of children in the alley had already disappeared.
Lila was glad for it. “We need to leave before the other two realize we’re here.” She wrenched open the truck’s passenger door. “I’m not shooting another blackcoat.”
“No way we’re leaving. That’s some highborn shit right there. We don’t run, we take them out, now,” Tristan said, spinning around and sprinting toward the mouth of the alley. Dixon offered Lila a small wink before taking off behind him.
Lila shoved her satchel under the passenger seat and followed behind them, Colt drawn, stomach twisting up, every cell in her body sending up an SOS to get away while they still had the chance. She was all too aware of the star drive in her laptop bag and what it contained. The hacked data broke several laws in several different countries. They’d argue over who had the right to hang her first.
“Stupid, sloppy, reckless man,” she muttered, running after Tristan, glad that her mesh hood would hide her identity. “Where are the others?”
“Doing their job.”
“Which is?”
“Covering our ass,” Tristan whispered, sliding to a stop at the mouth of the alley. He peered around the edge of the building, then ducked back again.
Sirens started up near the Wilson compound, only a minute or two away from their location.
A shot rang out at the front of the building, nothing but a puff of air.
One of the blackcoats swung around the corner, her weapon drawn.
Tristan fired.
The woman slumped to the ground at his feet.
Above them, an owl hooted, or at least Lila believed it to be an owl. One of the lookouts stood on the roof’s edge, revolver in hand, lips curved in satisfaction. He pointed back at the front door and tugged his ear.
Tristan gave him a thumbs-up and spun his finger in a circle above his head.
“Come on, let’s go,” he said, snatching up her hand as he ran back to the truck. “They got the other one. We’re clear.”
Dixon shoved the fallen blackcoat out of the street and followed Lila and Tristan down the alley. While Lila hopped into the truck cab, the two men quickly covered Frank and Toxic with a tarp, then piled into the truck with her jammed in the middle.
By the time Tristan backed the truck from the alley, the two lookouts had climbed down from the roof. They didn’t leap into the bed of the truck. Instead, they raced down the sidewalk.
“Where are they going?”
“To get the bikes. They parked in a garage a few streets over,” Tristan answered, yanking down his scarf and gunning the engine.
The militia spotted the truck before it turned the first corner. Four cruisers, lights whirling and sirens blaring, zoomed behind. The first stopped in front of Chaucer’s Ghost, narrowly missing the patrol vehicle. The rest did not deviate from their target. Bystanders on the streets backed away from the curbs and watched the chase as a dog might watch a ball.
Dixon took out his revolver, dumped its darts onto the floorboard, and loaded a magazine full of live ammunition.
Lila grabbed his chin, her eyes wide. “No. You can’t shoot people. We’re not Roman barbarians.”
Dixon batted away her hands. He retrieved his darts and shoved them into his pockets, then spun around in his seat, watching the parade of cruisers following them. He cocked his gun, popped out of the window, and brought the revolver up to fire.
His scarf slipped. He didn’t bother to fix it. His gaze had stopped on a teen in an overstuffed indigo coat, standing on the corner. Her blonde hair shook back and forth as she watched the chase.
He mouthed something, a curse with no breath behind it.
“She’s right. You can’t shoot out their tires without hitting someone on the street. Who’s out at one o’clock in the morning, anyway?”
“They are,” Lila said, pulling out her computer.
“Yeah, well, they need to stay home next time.” He yanked his palm from his pocket and tapped out a number. “I need teams two and three down on Harris now,” he ordered, voice much calmer than his driving. “I’ll be passing through in two minutes. Be there.”
He dropped the palm computer into his lap and jerked the wheel, turning down a street whose lamps still functioned. Mostly. The militia cruisers did not follow as closely any longer, but Lila heard more sirens on the way.
The entire third shift of the Wilson militia must have been sent out to capture them.
Lila opened the laptop and stretched her fingers.
“What are you doing?” Tristan asked.
“I’m going to try and scramble the Wilson’s communication system. I just need you to drive back around to—”
“Are you serious?” Tristan slammed the laptop shut and shoved it to the floorboard. “I’m not turning around.”
“Right now, they have the advantage. They’re going to work together to lead us somewhere and corner us. If t
hey can’t talk to one another, then they can’t do that, and we’ll have the advantage.”
“I’m not driving back!”
Lila leaned back into the seat. “Shortsighted little—”
“Same to you,” Tristan snapped, sneaking a peek in the rearview mirror. “I can’t believe they’re doing this for a stupid B&E.”
“It’s not for a B&E. Someone detonated a bomb two nights ago in front of the capitol, or have you forgotten? They don’t know that we weren’t planting a bomb in that restaurant. Any security chief with any sense will do whatever it takes to capture us now in case we did. If she’s on duty, she’ll be at the scene or in one of those cruisers, tailing after us.”
“So this is all my fault?”
“Do you know of someone else who detonated a—”
“What will they find if they review the network logs?”
“Nothing. My snoop programs scrubbed them clean as soon as I slipped out of Liberté. They changed the logs to make it look like I had downloaded a flood of tentacle porn.”
“Tentacle porn?”
Tristan and Dixon’s heads swiveled in unison.
“Keep your eyes on the road, damn it!”
“I am,” Tristan yelled. “How long will it take for them to figure out what you were really up to?”
“If they were really good and they guessed what I was up to? A few weeks. However, the Wilson militia has never been that great at computer security.”
“What do we do then?”
“If we get out of this, then we don’t do anything at all. I do. I go and talk to Chairwoman Wilson. I push her to do something stupid.”
“Like track us down and put a bullet in our heads?”
“Are you volunteering?”
A black truck swung out behind them as they crossed Harris Street. Lila whipped her head around as another street brought another truck. The second nearly sideswiped them in its haste to join in the chase, and a few people on the sidewalks jumped back, flattening themselves against the buildings. One brave soul didn’t flee. Instead he cheered, hooted, and laughed. When Lila looked in the rearview mirror after they passed, he’d begun to gesture lewdly at the Wilson cruisers with his brown paper bag.
The trucks that joined them were the same make, model, and color as theirs. Neither had license plates. Tristan flicked a switch near the radio. Lila heard a tiny motor flip on in the bed of the truck.
“You flipped the plate?” she asked. “Your black truck fetish makes so much more sense now.”
“It’s about time. Duck.”
“What?”
“Duck!”
Dixon grabbed her head and shoved it into his lap, then huddled over her. Their heads disappeared below the seats.
Lila found herself in a very interesting position.
“This only works if they get confused,” Tristan explained, retrieving a baseball cap from the dash and shoving it over his head.
The drivers of the trucks, all wearing the same cap, played hopscotch down the street, swerving into each other’s lanes and scrambling their positions. After a couple of streets, one of the trucks broke off to the left as Tristan turned right. The last truck continued straight.
The militia struggled. The drivers were too slow to realize what had happened and sort out who should go where. Two cruisers went straight.
Only one turned right after them, tires squealing, back fishtailing before righting itself, catching, and trudging on.
Tristan floored it. “Two down, one to go,” he said, jerking the wheel. The truck flew down an alley.
The cruiser followed.
A dull plink sounded against the tailgate.
“They’re shooting bullets now?”
“They wouldn’t dare. It was just a GPS tag.” Lila reached inside her front pocket and switched on her jammer, hoping it could scramble the device. “I turned on my jammer, but I—”
Tristan spun the truck into an alley, nearly clipping a fire hydrant. The cruiser following them wasn’t so lucky. It raked against the hydrant and clipped the wall of a lowborn shop.
The frame dented as it struck. The engine stalled.
Tristan punched the gas and flew into the next intersection. “Dixon, did you get Toxic’s laptop?”
He gave a thumbs-up.
“Good. We’re coming up on the garage. When we stop, take the laptops and head to the bikes. I’ll take Lila and the others back to the shop.”
Tristan slowed down in front of a four-story parking garage. He braked, hopped out, and raced to the back of his truck, squinting at the tailgate while Dixon ran for the bikes.
Lila cursed and jumped out as Tristan knocked the GPS off the truck.
“You don’t just leave them. Make them work for you,” she said, kicking the tracker into the sewer, hoping it would carry the chip away in a stream of sludge.
Tristan skirted the truck and yanked open the driver’s-side door. “Get back in, hurry!”
“It’s better if Toxic and I aren’t found together. She’s a hacker. It wouldn’t be a stretch for someone to put two and two together if we’re both caught.”
Tristan stopped and spun around. “Get in the truck, you stupid woman. What are you going to do? Run away on foot?”
The sirens roared nearby, closing in.
“It’s safer for us all. Get back to the shop. I’ll meet you there.”
“You can’t be serious. Get in. I can’t keep you safe if—”
“I’m not one of your people, Tristan. I don’t need you to keep me safe.”
Dixon spun around, already halfway down the street. He sensed the trouble brewing between Lila and Tristan, and motioned for her to come with him instead.
Both men stared at her expectantly, as if they wanted her to choose.
Lila spun and jogged down the street, ripping off her mesh hood as she raced away.
Dixon shouted, emitting an incomprehensible noise, half word, half rebuke.
Lila had never heard him try to speak before.
She wheeled around, eyeing the frowning Dixon, his eyebrows low.
Lila could barely form words. “Go. Both of you. Now!” she shouted, before scrambling into an alley next to the garage. It would be just another getaway for her in a world of getaways. Just another night, hiding after a job.
“Fuck!” Tristan kicked the truck’s tires. He took several steps toward her, then glanced at the sleeping figures in the truck bed. Giving one last kick, he yelled for Dixon to get to his bike. He jumped back into the front seat, pulled out into traffic, and drove away.
A cruiser bounded along, narrowly missing Tristan’s escape. They turned the wrong way, barreling forward as though they had his location.
Lila hoped they didn’t.
Before she moved out, a motorcycle pulled out of the garage. Dixon circled the block several times before he too gave up. He finally rushed off in the opposite direction, bound for the shop.
Lila breathed easier, listening to the sirens, none of them nearby. She turned down a side street, thrust her newsboy cap on her head, and slid from shadow to shadow, just like any other workborn out for a solitary stroll.
Chapter 17
Lila spent the next hour walking from street to street, hiding among a thinning crowd of Thursday night revelers. Wrapped in scarves and warm coats, each stumbled back home from bars or their lovers’ embraces. Half the horde preyed on the other half, and she saw at least a dozen pickpockets working the streets. The whores tipped their collars as they passed her, desperate for a last transaction or an hour away from the cold. They didn’t even notice the soft planes of her face. That inattention was likely why they were still on the street so late.
Others noticed her too, or at least her limp, thinking she was an easy mark until they saw the gun in her front coat pocket. Once the
adrenaline had left her, her ankle had begun to throb, still sore after her misguided leap across the alleyway and all the running after. In addition, her heels had rubbed against the leather in her cheap boots and scraped against her blisters.
It beat a holding cell, though. If she had been caught, her mother would not spare a moment’s thought at distancing her from the family. Chairwoman Wilson had exiled Alex out of anger, but Beatrice would do it out of preservation, out of necessity. It would be the most efficient solution to a new liability. One must think of the family before the individual.
Lila checked the time on her palm. A quarter to two. Her fingers twitched once again, keen to summon a taxi. Several had passed already that night, but she hadn’t bothered to flag one down. She didn’t have enough cash. She couldn’t call for one of her people to pick her up, either. Too many questions.
She slipped her palm back into her pocket and continued on, stretching her sore ankle, wrapping her coat more tightly to fight the cold. She’d just have to make it to the shop on her own. It was only another one or two kilometers away.
The familiar purr of a Firefly turned the corner. A silver Firefly. Her silver Firefly. A helmet obscured the rider’s face. Was it Tristan? Dixon? Someone else?
Did she care?
The bike sidled up next to her on the abandoned street. Its rider cut the engine, and Lila gratefully stopped beside it.
The rider took off his helmet.
“Why are you limping again?” Tristan frowned.
“It’s nothing,” she answered, grabbing on to a streetlight for support. “I just walked on it funny.”
“You should have holed up somewhere and called me.”
“How was I supposed to know you’d answer? I tried to call you after the Bullstow job, and you ignored me. I tried to call you tonight, and you ignored me. How would I know you’d actually pick up this time?”