Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising

by King, Sara

  “That’s nice,” Milar gritted. “Try again, please.” His tone added, Before I turn around and throttle you.

  “Uh.” She pulled the knife out, and, pinching the lump, tried again. This time the skin parted easily beneath the blade and she could see a gleaming nugget of bloody metal underneath. “Okay.”

  “See it?” Milar demanded.

  “Yes,” she said. She gripped it with her fingers. “Want me to pull it—”

  “No,” Milar cried, panic clear in his voice. “No. You have to separate the battery cap first.”

  “What’s a battery cap?”

  “Okay, here’s where it takes concentration. Get as much blood off of it as you can and grab either side of the capsule and tug it apart. It should separate in the middle, allowing you a pretty good view of what’s inside.”

  “Uh-huh,” Tatiana said, wiping the thing off with the sleeve of her uniform and prying it open. It made a little clicking sound and moved apart.

  “Okay, this is really important,” Milar said. “You have thirty seconds to disable the battery cap or it’s going to send the juice into my central nervous system and paralyze me for good.”

  “Why didn’t you say that before?” Tatiana cried. “And what’s the battery cap?”

  “It’s a little black ball on the inside. There’s a notch in the top for a screwdriver. Put the tip of the knife in it and twist counter-clockwise ‘til it falls out.”

  Tatiana located the thing and lowered the tip of the blade toward the slot. The knife refused to hold steady. “I’m shaking too bad,” she cried.

  “Squid, you’re gonna be shaking a hell of a lot worse when those Nephyrs put you up on the rack because you were helping me and let me die.”

  Nothing like a nice little dose of terror to narrow one’s field of vision to the task at hand. Tatiana’s world shrank to the little black knob the size of a pinhead. “Got it,” Tatiana said, the moment the blade was seated. “Now twist it, right?”

  “Counter clockwise,” Milar warned.

  “Okay!” Tatiana screamed, twisting.

  A minute later, Milar said, “Well, I’m not drooling on the floor, so it looks like it worked. Now all you gotta do is pull it out.”

  “Pull what out?”

  “The lifeline.”

  “Why? It’s dead.”

  “Dammit,” Milar roared, “You took out the defense system. Not the tracking beacon.”

  Grimacing, Tatiana pinched the tiny capsule and gave it a tentative tug.

  “Gotta pull harder than that,” Milar said. “And faster, too. That Nephyr’s gonna come back wondering why I’m not screaming.”

  “Ewww,” Tatiana said, once she started to see the pink wires emerge from his spine. “Oh gross, gross.”

  “It’s fine. You’re doing fine. Just go slow. Those things can still get triggered if you jiggle them. Please go slow.”

  “This is slow,” Tatiana snapped. “Oh God. This is icky,” she said, flinching away from the grodie thing she was pulling from his neck. “You owe me big time, collie. Big time.”

  “I know,” Milar said. He was absolutely still beneath her. “We’ll talk about it later. Just go slow and don’t rush it, ok? And dear God stop jerking it!”

  “I’m not!”

  “You are.” She could see the muscles in his jaw standing out.

  Tatiana grinned to herself as she worked. “Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

  “There’s no payback when we’re both dead. Just calm down and let it come out on its own. Like a virgin. No need to rush it. It’ll come around in its own time.”

  “You’re disgusting.”

  “And make sure you don’t let any of the little wires touch each other when they come out. Very bad mojo. As soon as you can, just set it down gently on the floor and back away.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Tatiana said. “Ugh.” The last electrode finally came free and all four of them danced around like the little legs of a spider. Disgusted, she threw it to one side. The thing left a bloody smear across the concrete wall, then made a metallic tinkle as it collapsed in a wiry heap in the corner.

  Milar glanced at it. “You know, you don’t listen to instructions very well.”

  “Sue me.” She grimaced and wiped her bloody hands on his dragony back.

  Milar glanced over his shoulder at the bloody smear, looked up at her with a raised eyebrow, then heaved himself to his feet. He retrieved the EMP wand, took the knife from her, then offered a hand. “Let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?” Tatiana asked, keeping a wary distance.

  “To bust up a few glittering tree ornaments,” Milar said.

  “Do I have to come?” Tatiana asked, giving the EMP wand a nervous look.

  Milar shrugged. “Use that little AI trick of yours to get the door open for me and then you can sit here and suck your thumb for all I care.”

  Tatiana narrowed her eyes. “You’re a real prick, for somebody who needs my help,” she growled, slapping her palm to the biometrics pad.

  Milar sobered and hefted the EMP wand. Facing the door, he said, “You’re gonna need a lot of mine before this is over, squid. Stay behind me, and call it even.”

  “Whatever,” Tatiana muttered, trying not to look like she was about to pee herself. “Maybe I should have the knife.”

  “No.” Milar said. “You’d drop it.” He stepped outside the moment the door opened.

  Narrowing her eyes, Tatiana followed him.

  Chapter 26

  Killer

  “Do I have everyone’s attention?” a harsh female voice demanded. “I’m only going to say this once.”

  The air in the cavern still stung with the acrid taste of ozone, and the eggers stood frozen in petrified silence.

  “Good,” the woman said. She was a dim outline in the darkness, the eggers on all sides having backed away from her, leaving her standing alone except for two other women at her back.

  “Now listen carefully.” Magali held her breath as the woman swung her gun back toward her end of the group. The woman passed her over, then swung back, keeping the barrel moving at all times. Behind her, her two terrified-looking companions were huddled against the wall. All three looked to be recent draftees… Until Magali saw the Coalition codes tattooed into their arms.

  Guards.

  Naked guards.

  Confused, Magali tried to piece together just what was happening. As nude as they were, it was unlikely the guards had come down here prior to the Harvest. Not smugglers, then. They had to have been in formation with the others when the Director and her ‘friends’ relieved them of their garments.

  “Good,” the woman with the gun said. “What’s going to happen is you all are going to go down into the mines, fill up your sacks, and bring some back here for my friends and I. A few from each sack—we’re not greedy. The three of us don’t know jack shit about Shriekers, so it’s best for everyone involved that we don’t go anywhere near them. With me so far?”

  No one spoke.

  “Good,” the woman said. She pointed into the mines. “We hate to do this to you, but we’re not eggers. We’re citizens. Director thinks she’s gonna teach us some sort of lesson, spending a day down here in the slime, but she’s about as stupid as she is ugly. We were just doing what everybody does. Bullshitting. Passing the time. Playing cards. Maybe screwing, if it was an off-day. How the hell were we supposed to know he was Runaway Joel?”

  Oh crap, Magali thought, glancing at Joel. “Joel,” she whispered, “get your head down.”

  Joel merely blinked at her.

  “Down,” Magali urged. She pointed at the woman with the gun and tugged his wrist downward. Joel reluctantly sank into a hunched crouch.

  “Speaking of Joel,” the woman continued, “I saw him in the formation tonight. The good Director let him out to play, didn’t she? Where is he?” She began searching the gathered eggers with her eyes. “I have something for him.”

  “Shit,” Magali
muttered. “Don’t move.” She placed a finger to her lips and held it there, for Joel’s benefit.

  The guard with the gun waited a few more minutes, then laughed. “Don’t wanna come out for my gift, eh, Joel? How about this. I start shooting until you get your scrawny ass up here.”

  Magali glanced down at the smuggler, who was looking up at her, obviously close to panic. Magali knew what was going through his head. For all he knew, they were going to shoot him.

  For all Magali knew, he was right.

  “Fine,” the guard said, after no one moved. She stepped toward the huddled eggers and raised her gun to a woman’s temple. Her countenance tightened in that look she knew all-too-well from Patrick’s psychotic brother. She’s going to do it, Magali thought, horrified. She’s going to shoot her. The guard’s finger began to squeeze on the trigger.

  “He can’t understand you,” Magali cried, dragging Joel to his feet. Thankfully, he didn’t resist. When the guard twisted to look at her, Magali continued hurriedly, “The Director had her robots destroy his language centers.”

  The guard, upon seeing Joel, gave a bitter frown. “She muted him?”

  “Yes,” Magali said. “I stayed behind and—”

  “Shut up.” To Joel, the woman said, “Get over here. My sisters and I have been itching to give you a good thrashing for what you did to us. Got us demoted and flogged, you sonofabitch. My gift is I’m going to kill you after we’re done with you, so that when the Nephyrs come to extract their due, all they find is a corpse. You might deserve a good beating, but you don’t deserve that. Now get over here.”

  Joel simply stood where he was. When it was obvious the woman expected something of him, he gave a helpless shrug and glanced at Magali for help.

  “Please don’t hurt him,” Magali said, knowing by the woman’s resentful look that she planned to do just that. “He doesn’t understand.”

  The guard snorted. “And he doesn’t know how to play poker, either. Yeah, right.” She narrowed her eyes and lifted her gun so it was pointed directly at Magali. “Joel, get up here or I’m shooting your pretty friend in the face.”

  Staring down the barrel, Magali had never been so frightened in her life. Every muscle wanted to freeze up and relax, all at the same time. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see anything but the muzzle in front of her. Round and around in her head, all she could think was that all the woman had to do was twitch her finger and Magali would never think anything, ever again.

  Anna wouldn’t have flinched. She would have coldly stared the woman down and told her exactly how impressed she was with her substandard gun and her limited intellect. She would have regaled her with blood-chilling tales of their father’s training, of how every single person in Deaddrunk was taught to kill from birth, of how the woman’s gentle Coalition upbringing could never prepare her for the horrors she was going to experience in the next few seconds, if she didn’t drop her gun.

  Magali wasn’t Anna. Magali’s guts twisted with diarrhea and her legs shook so badly they threatened to collapse.

  Beside her, Joel did not move, though now he was frowning as he glanced from Magali to the guard.

  “I’ll help him,” Magali said, trembling all over. She made a point to move and speak very carefully, lest the woman’s trigger finger twitch. “Okay? Please don’t shoot. Please.” She gently took Joel’s good hand and pulled him forward.

  Joel followed her docilely, obviously not understanding what the woman had in store for him. Seeing his placid look made Magali so frustrated she wanted to scream.

  She can’t actually plan to kill him, Magali thought, as she brought him abreast of the woman. She’s just trying to scare him.

  Joel came to a tranquil halt in front of the guard, though his eyes had become wary as the gun switched targets to center on his chest. The woman peered up at his face, then glanced down at his ruined hand and grimaced. “Aanaho, what did she do to him?”

  “She slammed his hand in a door,” Magali said.

  “I’m not talking to you, kid,” the guard snapped. “I’m just trying to figure out why the Director was stupid enough to send him down here.” She gestured at the smuggler’s bruised body, his swollen face, his maimed and twisted hand. “You’re obviously in no condition to stand, much less harvest Shrieker nodules.”

  “Director’s already taken a pretty big chunk out of him,” one of the guard’s companions commented. She sounded disappointed. “Not much left for us.”

  The guard with the gun gave a cruel snort. “Oh, there’s plenty left for us.”

  “Please don’t hurt him,” Magali said again.

  “I said shut up,” the guard snapped, swinging to look at her. She took a step forward. Magali saw her foot kick out, had a moment to cringe, then lost her breath as it slammed into her stomach and sent her to her knees in the slime. The old shame of failing her father’s tests, of hitting the ground hard after Milar tore her legs out from under her, returned. She saw tears.

  Killer. With the word came a long-buried memory of a schoolyard chant, of standing in Wideman’s garden, of how she had done everything to change his single word for her. She had played with dolls, had studied drawing and art, had pretended to be sick and read books. She had refused to participate in her father’s war-games, had let Anna and Milar and Patrick and Jeanne find and ‘kill’ her early, so she could go sit out the rest of the games and watch, instead.

  Killer, Wideman’s voice whispered to her again. And, instinctively, looking at the casual way the woman held the gun, the softness in her muscles and posture, Magali knew she could.

  No! Magali’s mind screamed. Anna was the killer. Milar was the killer. Magali wanted to be a mother, a wife. She wanted to meet her soulmate and have a home and raise children in some peaceful town, in some place where every man, woman, and child was not trained to murder people, where little kids weren’t forced to hold guns and little old men didn’t spew nonsense that was written down and memorized with awe. Where a child’s future wasn’t defined by a single word.

  Killer, Wideman’s voice cackled at her. Magali squeezed her eyes shut, forcing the tears of pain down her cheeks.

  “Sorry,” she whispered, holding up her hands as she carefully got to her feet. “Sorry.”

  The guard whipped the gun back around to face Joel, who had taken a step closer with his good hand outstretched. “You don’t like me hurting your girlfriend there, Joel?” the guard laughed. “Maybe we should hurt you, instead.” She stepped forward and delivered a similar kick to Joel’s already-bruised midriff.

  Killer, Wideman’s voice said again, as Joel collapsed with a heart-wrenching groan of pain. The smuggler curled into a ball as the women laughed, his eyes on Magali, pleading. The gun-woman noticed this and jeered, “What, Joel? You think your doe-eyed little girlfriend is gonna help you?” She chuckled cruelly and pulled back her foot to deliver another kick.

  Magali’s gut twisted as she saw Joel’s face go blank with resignation, a strangled whimper escaping his throat. Before she could think, Magali stepped forward and grabbed the woman’s pistol. She twisted the weapon up and back, then wrenched the gun forward until something in the woman’s trigger finger snapped. The woman screamed.

  When Magali stepped away, the gun was firmly in her hand. A moment later, the implications of what she had done began to make her heart pound. Looking at the guard, who was now nursing her crippled hand, Magali swallowed hard. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…”

  One of the woman’s companions stepped forward with a knife in her hand. Her face was filled with cruel purpose. Magali backed up another step, her fingers loosening on the gun in regret. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “You’re dead, girl,” the knife-wielder said. It was a cold promise.

  Magali’s heart began to hammer as the woman started to circle her. She was afraid of close combat, almost as much as she was afraid of heights. Of all the village’s ‘games,’ this was what she had feared the most, what she had alwa
ys failed in no matter how hard she tried. She just didn’t have the coordination. Time and again, Milar had thrown her to the ground at her father’s direction. Time and again, Magali had stared at the ground in shame, holding a sore joint in humiliation as her father chastised her for being slow and stupid.

  The woman was circling around behind her, splitting her attention, giving the other two guards a chance at her back. It was so much like she remembered in her ‘fights’ with Milar, pinned under his merciless stare, that a whimper began to build in her throat. Father hadn’t cared that she wasn’t built for fighting. He didn’t care that Milar had been almost a hundred pounds heavier than her. He didn’t care that the last thing she ever wanted to do was find herself in hand-to-hand combat. He only cared that she became Wideman’s ‘killer.’

  The guard’s face was filled with dark promise, the knife gripped tightly in one hand, her Coalition-issue blade weaving as the woman danced from foot to foot. Magali knew that, unlike her practices with Milar, this woman wasn’t going to let her get back to her feet if she took her to the ground.

  Not this. Please not this. She’d struggled to avoid this. Her whole life. Magali took a step backwards, the gun burning in her hand. Her sister would have simply raised the weapon and fired.

  I’m not Anna, Magali thought, her entire body vibrating with fear and adrenaline as she followed the woman’s body with the barrel of her gun. I’m not a killer.

  “What’s the matter, egger?” the woman sneered, as she circled, “That gun’s only got one shot every three seconds. Afraid you’ll miss?”

  “No,” Magali whispered. She watched the woman circle, thinking of the village Anna had killed, of the way her sister’s brown eyes had been filled with excitement as she spoke of the slaughter. She remembered Milar, boasting to Patrick about torturing a man when they thought she couldn’t hear. They were the killers. Why hadn’t Wideman called them ‘killer?’ She was nothing like them.

  Wideman had to be wrong. She wasn’t a killer.

  Magali raised the gun and, eyes scrunched closed, squeezed off a warning shot.