by Kris Holt
'It's his photo in the locket! How's he supposed to fake that?'
I held my arms up and tried to speak above the fury. 'Maybe if we all just calm down and talk about this-'
'He has a passing resemblance to someone from an old photo taken back when they were a kid and that means you're just going to follow him into the lion's den?'
'Look at us. Our eyes look the same. Our everything looks the same. We're both skinny as rifle rounds. We're brother and sister. It's obvious.'
'Everyone's skinny, Rat, ain't no-one got enough to eat! Dammit, you're just seeing what you want to see. You've had that locket around your neck since you were old enough to trust not to lose it, and ever since then, you've been seeing a new brother every time you look around.'
There was a moment then, a brief calm, that kind you get when someone has said something in the heat of the moment and moved the conversation from an acceptable place to somewhere else entirely. I thought of myself, knowing only a space where a mom should be, and looked down at Rat, who knew about her mother but had this same space where there might be a brother instead. Family, tied not to her by duty or shared loyalty, but actual blood. A tie that might mean something somehow more real.
Mar said to Rat, 'I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry.'
'Fuck you,' my sister said. She led me by the sleeve of the cassock over to where three more hovertrikes were stacked up, leaning against the wall of the canyon.
'You're with me,' she said, smiling again despite herself.
'What about them?' Mar was following behind, slowly, making no attempt to catch up. Cassie walked last of all, looking weary and uncertain.
'Oh, they'll follow. They won't let me go off on my own,' Rat said. That at least was a comforting thought. Rat might not have known her intimate family ties, but she had a family nonetheless. And now we were in trouble, like it or not, they were going to follow along.
Rat glanced at me once more, and I was struck once again by those telling features. I stepped up behind her on the trike.
'Hold on tight, brother,' she said. 'We're gonna go get your friends.'
Chapter 25 – Stealth Mission
Maybe you can't tell much about a person from a single journey, but if that journey is a headlong rush into the dark mouth of Hell, maybe you can learn something.
Rat, my little sister, driving forward, taking point. Adrenaline pumping in her veins, feeling her way through the shadows, dodging around the dark. I could feel her determination like it was my own. Cassie, leaning low into the wind as it shaped her for purpose. I knew she had the speed to take this run up to the next level, but we were here on black ops. Girl knew subtlety when it was needed.
Finally, there was Mar, the wings of the Triad. Everywhere I looked, she was there, behind and to the sides. She glided in and out, never in your sight but always in your mind. The sweetest nightmare, this dark angel.
They would die for one another, I knew. I was just hoping it wouldn't come to that.
We played it low-key, least as far as we could. The clouds were lined with grey and we went from desert to town, the hum of sand-blown engines the only sound we made. In our wake, the curfew torches were lit on the corners and we could hear voices calling to one another, echoes on the empty streets. Hole Town snarled, sweated in the heat and tempted the flame. The whores lingered on the dark sides of their doorways. Gangmasters waited for danger to pass and sent their charges, the orphan boys, out in the night to make deliveries and do business. You never saw a damn thing, but you knew it was there. The town kept turning over, smooth as a snake on its belly. Weren't no-one gonna tell them what to do.
When I got to the barber shop, everything there was in darkness. I assumed that Jensen's men were watching the front, so instead, I went round the back, over the fence and into the courtyard, in the space right up next to the door where we couldn't be seen from the roof. Cassie was the tallest of us by far, and as far as the fences around allowed, she stood lookout, her rifle poised.
Pressing my face to the cold corner of a window, I couldn't see or hear a thing. Up to that point, I'd believed that Jayci would wait for me - thought that we'd been through enough together by now that she would stay. But it was clear that stakes were rising, and that girl was sharp. If she and Gregor had waited, they'd be sitting ducks when Jensen and his goons burst in.
I rapped gently at the window to no response, and when I was done trying that, I moved onto the door. Mar knelt beside of me and whispered, 'Why are we stopping?'
'There's a door in the way,' I said.
'I can see that. I just wasn't expecting it to be an issue.'
'You can pick a lock, right?'
I could hear Mar's scorn, even if I couldn't see it. 'Why would I be able to pick a goddamn lock? I live in the middle of a desert. Where in hell you think I'd get the practise?'
'I thought you said there was more to you than your shooting and your singing.'
'Why don't you have a key?'
'It's not my house.'
I was glaring at her, or at least vaguely where her eyes would be if I could have seen them. A hot breath and a swaddle of loose clothing on my other side heralded Rat's arrival next to me. 'Stand back. I can get in there.'
A small light clicked on and a dull piece of wire appeared in Rat's hand. It rattled back and forth in the lock as she cursed and twisted. I was a little surprised, but also kind of thrilled that my little sis had life skills. Still, as her older sibling, I felt obliged to make sure that she used them judiciously.
'You wouldn't have learned these skills from carrying out illegal activities, would you?'
Rat carried on looking at the lock and then spat into the mechanism. It clicked again when she began to turn the wire. 'Sometimes you gotta get into places, brother, and sometimes you gotta get out.'
'Might come a day when we're thankful for that,' Mar said.
'Like today?' Rat beamed as the lock clicked a final time, and the tiny light turned off, plunging me back into darkness.
'Okay,' I said, gently. 'This one's on me. Be ready. Let me lead the way.'
I tugged gently at the handle and slid through on the dusty floor on my heels, ready to spring up if needed. Bars of light and colour slanted across the room as the door opened. At first, a slow creak from the door was all I could hear, and then there was a curious sound from the corridor up front, like a shuffling or snuffling. I reached for my pistol and looked up into another pointing down.
'Phoenix?'
Jayci's lengthy braids hung down by her knees. They coiled like springs as she lifted her gun up from my face and trained it on Mar and Rat.
'Jayci, it's me,' I called.
'Where in hell you been?' Jayci lowered her gun and embraced me with her free arm. 'I was starting to think maybe Jensen got you in the tunnel.'
'He ain't that good,' I said. 'Did you miss me?'
'Oh, for sure,' Jayci disengaged with her usual nervous energy. 'Had to make my own coffee, and you know that no-one wins in that situation. I see you brought friends too.'
Rat had lowered her gun and smiled as she nudged me. 'Brother, you didn't say you had a girlfriend.'
'Brother?' Jayci raised a chaotic eyebrow.
'Long story,' I said.
'Don't worry, hun,' Jayci said to Rat. 'He never told me he had a sister either.'
Gregor came down from the upstairs, twitching furiously at the number of new faces in his space. I did the introductions as quickly as I could. 'Jayci, Gregor. She's the looks, he's the brains. Rat, my sister. No, don't ask. Marig...Mar. She saved my life. Girl watching our backs is Cassie.'
Introductions made, Gregor lifted a heavy bag containing his telescope and other instruments onto his shoulders. Rat and Mar followed him outside, leaving me alone for a moment with Jayci.
'How much longer were you going to wait for me?' I asked.
Jayci's eyes were swamp-dark, and for a moment, her long nose and crooked teeth were my whole world. 'As long as it
took,' she said.
'Really?'
'You know, provided you weren't too long and all.'
'So you would have gone?'
'I knew you'd make it back here.'
'You can't never say for certain,' I said.
'Ain't nothing certain,' Jayci said. Her fingertips brushed against mine as she moved past me, giggling to herself in her manic way, and I stayed there for whole seconds after she'd gone, wanting to be alone with the deep thrill that I felt at her presence.
I was the last person to get outside and when I did, everyone was pinned to the wall. Mar hissed at me to take cover. I was there and Jayci was there with me, and all was silence.
'What's going on?' I whispered.
It was Cassie, frozen in the far corner of the tiny yard, who answered. 'There's movement out there.'
'We know who?'
'Who do you think?'
I pressed my foot down on the vertical side of the wall and lifted myself up so I could snatch a glance over the top of the wall. It was like staring out across the desert. 'Where?'
Cassie was perfectly motionless, except for a single hand which gestured one direction and then the other. I found that the longer I stared at her, the harder she became to see. With that and her eagle eyesight, I was starting to see what Cassie brought to the party.
'Don't doubt Cassie's eyes,' Mar warned. 'If she says there are people out there, there are people out there.'
'Jensen found us, then,' Jayci growled.
'Should we go out the front?' Gregor asked.
'They put up curfew torches,' Jayci replied. 'We'd be lit up like Christmas.'
There was a few seconds of quiet before Mar said, 'No choice then. Suit up. We're going to have to go through them.'
I already had my hand on my pistol when I stared down the passageway and Piano Man's words from earlier came back to me. 'When you're faced with a choice between left and right, choose straight ahead.'
I looked directly across the passageway to the two-storey warehouse wall opposite. 'No,' I said. 'There's another way.'
Chapter 26 – Taking the Straight Road
Across the dusty back alley that rolled left and right into the arms of Jensen's grunts, the warehouse backed directly onto the barber shop. It was sheer, solid brick except for a single rolling steel door which looked near as damn sealed. Unlike at the Brown Boys' farmstead, this time there was no doubt at all in my mind about what we had to do. If we deviated from the path that Piano Man had set, people were gonna die, I was sure of it.
'Course, people were still gonna die. They just weren't gonna be my people.
'They're getting closer,' Cassie whispered. 'If we're going to move, now's the time.'
'Then we move.' I tapped Cassie on her arm and pointed at the grapple in her belt. 'I'm gonna need your help with something. I need you to grapple up onto the warehouse roof.'
Cassie lifted the night-vision goggles off her eyes and looked to Mar. The girl said, 'No. We don't split up.'
'We do,' I replied, 'but only for as long as it takes to get that door open.'They followed my eyeline to the rolling door opposite.
Mar paused only a second. She wasn't taking orders and we all knew it, but she also didn't have a better plan. 'Okay. Do it.'
I spun round to face Jayci, who was staring back at me, wide-eyed in the dusk. 'You still have your gear from the church in the Sands, right?'
'The church?'
'Remember the church? Used to exist until you got there.'
'I don't remember that.'
To her credit, her face was straight as a die. 'Jayci, I need your grenades.'
Jayci wrinkled her nose in disgust and reached into her bag, pulling out a pair of steel balls with ridged surfaces, topped by pins. She pressed them into my hands.
'Flick those pins out and let go real quick.'
'Gotcha. Look out for the explosions. When they go, that's your sign to move.'
Cassie was over the fence in a single movement; I wasn't so graceful but I was light on my feet and that was all it took. Two of us, sneaking, would be fine. If the entire troop had gone with the trikes, Jensen's men would have seen us and cut us to pieces before we got close.
I threw myself against the wall and a sound pinged out to my left as Cassie fired her grapple. Those long, strong legs of hers kicked in and she was up the wall in three bounds. The cord dropped across my face and I wrapped it around my wrist. Just once, before I pulled myself up after her, I glanced back at the silhouettes of my posse. Well, whatever else they were, they were family to me, and I was going to lead them to safety.
Cassie took point, tugging on the sleeve of my jacket and directing me as we went. Without those night vision goggles - her own old world tech - we'd have had no chance. What little light I could use was on the fringes of my vision. The curfew torches illuminated streets in the middle distance, always from below, as though the very flames of Hell itself were leaking through and consuming the world.
Cassie dropped down to her knees and pulled me along with her.
'Get your laser out.' She pulled my hands into place. 'Fire here.'
'Look away,' I said, and did so myself as I squeezed the trigger.
The scene was bathed for a second in green as a lock holding a hatch in place disintegrated. The hatch itself clattered away and we stepped through the hole and down a narrow staircase into pitch darkness below.
'Okay. Now we just have to get down to the bottom-'
Cassie gripped my shoulder for a second, tight between thumb and forefinger, and then she was wrenched away from me with a shriek.
I called her name quietly, and then figuring it didn't matter if we were already under attack, loudly. I could hear choking only a few feet away, so I threw all my weight in that direction and clattered into someone, or several someones, knocking everyone over. I heard a gasping, like someone struggling for breath. I was sure it was Cassie.
I was ready for action if I could see what I was hitting, but sliding round an abandoned space in the pitch black wasn't the fight I'd have chosen. I popped a Candy Jack regardless, and then, because I couldn't think of any other source of light and I was all out of ideas, I fired my laser into the space above my head.
For just a second, I got a scene in malachite green. Two figures, one with long limbs, holding her throat and writhing on the floor, surely Cassie. The other, standing over her, a man with wide muscly shoulders and wearing a military vest, carrying a long rifle with the butt raised like a club. He was wearing the same kind of goggles as Cassie was, but you could still catch the thin, white lines of the scars that I recognized from when I'd seen them before.
Before I could react, a large chunk of masonry from the ceiling dropped down between us, and a rumbling from around my feet told me that it had gone straight through the floor as well. I reached out for something to hold myself upright, but grabbed only air.
'Keep firing that thing, boy, and you'll bring the whole damn building down.' Jensen's voice echoed in the space but remained measured, like he was commenting on my pitching arm from the bottom of a well.
'If it takes you down with it, I'll consider that a price worth paying,' I said.
'C'mon now,' he replied, 'that ain't no way to speak to a man who's already let you live twice.'
'Guess now you're gonna tell me why you did that,' I said. Keep him talking, because if you can keep him talking, you know where he is...
'Well, seeing as you asked, I kinda liked you. I could tell straightaway you were a resourceful kid, and I genuinely thought you'd take the money and run. Do the smart thing and head north. But now it's clear you're gonna be a jackass, you're not giving me much choice but to deal with you.'
'And dealing consists of ambushing us in a dark warehouse?'
'I can see the way your mind works, in straight lines and right angles. You're not gonna climb a mountain if you can knock one down.'
The strange echo in the space was just enough to make me doubt where Jen
sen was standing. I hadn't taken a shot at him for fear of hitting Cassie, but sooner or later I was going to be left with no choice. Outside, his goons would be sneaking down the alleys. If I delayed too long, it would cost us everything.
I was in the moment again, just like I'd been in the corridor at the back of the Brown farmstead. Hesitation is a live one. I couldn't afford to miss. I wasn't going to get a second shot.
'You might want to stay still, instead of circling around and away,' Jensen called, and I knew his own device was allowing him to track my movements in the darkness. 'Floor's a little bit on the weak side. Keeps giving way.'