by K. Gorman
“That doesn’t really matter much then, does it?” she said.
“No, not in the long term.”
“Then, the morality of possibly not healing his wife and daughter aside, it doesn’t really matter if I go or not.”
Marc snorted. “Morality aside, it would be a much safer bet to, as Soo-jin suggested, jet out from under the sky and into space.”
A quiet presence at the door made her look over. She’d almost forgotten Ethan had been sitting there, but her heart pulled as she caught the sudden look in his eyes.
He leaned forward from his seat. “Does that mean we’re going to the Ozark?”
A small silence filled the cabin as both Cookie and Marc glanced over, and both of their faces sobered at the look on his. Marc hunched over, his arms crossing over his abdomen.
“Let’s… not get ahead of ourselves,” he said. “We still have to breach the blockade.”
“But, after that, we’ll go to the Ozark? I can see my dad again?” He swallowed hard, his throat trembling. His hand, too, Karin noticed.
“Well, uhhh…” Cookie shifted uncomfortably. “We—”
“Yes,” Marc said. “We will.”
“What? I thought we were headed to Belenus for her sister?” Cookie said. “Isn’t that what you asked me to do the net-mine for?”
“Belenus?” Karin stiffened. “Is she there? Did you find something? I—”
She faltered as she saw Marc’s face.
He hadn’t told her he’d been doing a search.
“We have enough fuel to do both, but we’ll hit the Ozark first. It’s closer,” he added.
So that explained the route-find she’d discovered in the Nemina’s memory drive the other night. Marc had been doing some research.
“But—” She sputtered. “You ran a search for her? Did you find anything?”
Both men looked to each other, and her breath caught as their expressions froze. When Marc glanced up again, he straightened and faced her, meeting her eyes.
Before he could say anything, Soo-jin returned.
“Sorry to interrupt the party, guys, but Songbird just got in touch.” She rounded the corner, netlink in hand. The message on its screen underlit her angled face in white as she waved it. “They’re ready to meet with their people.”
A bright spike of fear drove through Karin’s chest as memory flashed through her. Dark, straight-lined corridors. The flash of ink wash paintings of gates and gods. Shadows unfolding from the corners of her eyes and attacking. Her toes curled as she remembered the pain in her knee, and the blurred, heady dissociation in her head.
A Shadow had taken her, but she'd come out.
Even with the military disrupting their plans, they'd worked together to save the Lost, going room to room. And, despite their efforts, they’d missed some.
“Are they all right?” Marc asked. “Did the military…?”
“Alliance had them on lock down up until today, but Jaxx and Verina hid the Lost in the woods. They’re out now with Elder Chris, driving the Senschel I took up there. Already in the city.”
Cookie blew a heavy breath through his lips. “And let me guess, they’re all old and infirm and feeble, right? And we’d be right bastards if we left them possessed?”
Soo-jin frowned down at him, some of her earlier thunder mixing with the confusion on her face. “Yes. Why?”
“Nothing, nothing.” Cookie waved a hand as he swiveled the chair. “Just testing my moral compass.”
“No chance we could meet them well outside of it, then?” Marc asked.
“Well…” Soo-jin paused, a thoughtful look coming over her face. “We could. It’d be a pain for them to move again with the Lost. They’ve returned the Senschel, so they’ve only got one of those small Inises to get around in, but… I guess they could? If they needed to?” She turned her gaze toward Senton’s image, which still displayed across the screen. “We don’t have to get him, too, if you don’t want. We can completely ignore him.”
They all paused again, turning to look at the screen, and something tense coiled inside her. Why was it so hard to decide what to do?
“Where are they?” Marc asked.
“Ninurta-West.”
He nodded to the screen. “That’s close to where he is, then. If we go, we might as well get him, too.”
“Actually, it might be good to do a test run of the anonymizers.” Cookie patted the computer in his lap. “Make sure we don’t run into problems on the way through the blockade.”
“Maybe you can ask for help from one of the old, infirm, and feeble people we’ll be healing.” Sarcasm dripped from Soo-jin’s face, and some of her earlier thunder returned as she bared her teeth at Cookie. “Sully Grayson was an Air Force Colonel.”
“From when, the Border Wars? We’ve got our own, much more recent veteran already on board. Captain Jones?”
Marc ignored him, his attention on the still of Senton. After a few seconds, he reached down over the dashboard and tapped a few buttons. The picture swooped off the screen, replaced by a planet map that, as he entered another command, quickly shifted to a city-map of Bau. Five districts branched out to the east from Hegir-Nuna, the main island, like spokes on a wheel, with a sixth that wandered up into the mountains on the north side of the city.
Senton had called from Hegir-Nuna, but the Songbird people were in the district just east of it.
They studied the map for a minute, silence taking the bridge.
“It’s doable. And it would be useful to test the anonymizers,” he said finally, re-crossing his arms over his chest. After a second, his gaze slipped to her. “We don’t have to get Senton.”
It was an offer. An easy out for her. And, as he held her eyes, she realized that he had left the decision to her. She would decide if Senton’s people got healed or not.
That amount of responsibility was not something she had signed up for, and she didn’t like it. Already, it weighed on her. If she said yes, they’d be risking everything to get to him. If she said no, she’d be a steaming turd for not trying. She was the only person who could heal them.
She closed her eyes and let out a breath. Could she really do that? Simply walk away, knowing people needed her help? Knowing she had broken a promise? Leave them to their fate?
Yes. She’d done it before, and she had a good feeling she’d do it again. She already was. After all, she didn't plan to heal the 470 million people on the planet that also needed her help.
Her gaze switched back to the map. She knew the districts well enough to zero in on the two affected. Already, she could picture the shapes of their streets and buildings in her mind, line up potential meeting places, escape routes.
“If we’re going in, we might as well go for him, too.” She shrugged. “We have to drop his stuff off, anyway.”
There was a small break in the air and, although they hid it, she could feel the switch in people’s moods.
Soo-jin let out a breath. “Guess our moral compass is still around.”
Karin winced. Soo-jin probably didn’t mean it that way. She’d known the woman long enough to know that she mouthed off a lot just for the sake of it—but she couldn’t help but remember back to a time not-so-long-ago where their relationship had been rockier.
Marc dropped his gaze to Cookie. “How soon could we be up and running?”
“Maybe an hour to re-process my programs?”
“An hour and a half,” Karin added, glancing to the rats' nest of wires Cookie had made under the dashboard. “I want to double-check systems.”
“Good idea,” Marc said. “Now, anyone have any ideas for a plan?”
As the rest of them began to scheme, she leaned back against the wall with a sigh.
Well, that decision was made.
Then she caught sight of Ethan, standing silent and forgotten by the wall. She saw the exact moment when his eyes went from wide and scared to a kind of resigned, anxious look. As he backed up, away from the where Soo-jin,
Cookie, and Marc pressed in around the main display, he met her gaze.
The betrayal in his face cut her like a knife.
Chapter Three
This is a stupid idea. A really stupid idea that’s going to end up with us all locked in some Alliance prison and me strapped to a gurney, waiting for medical experiments.
The light from the main hallway made her shadow twist and dance on the wall as she paced. They’d arranged to meet in the Arcin-17 complex, a forty-level conglomeration that had been architecturally lashed together through the sprawl near the northern edge of the Hegir-Nuna island, where the coastline started to curve into the mountains, and Marc had left her down an unlit hallway in one of the complex’s many retail deadzones. Boarded and shuttered shops lined the corridor, their sales and fliers long out of date, the windows beyond their security gates dark and coated with dust. Karin’s fingers twitched as she passed two stubbed-out cigarettes lying on the floor.
Guess the cleaning bots didn’t come this way much. If at all.
A distant shout made her look back to the mouth of the hall, anticipating Marc’s return—he’d only left a few minutes ago—and she paused her walk to give the hallway a good listen.
Nothing.
She shook her head again. Then, realizing how hopelessly cliché the action was, she re-adjusted the hood of her borrowed jacket to hide her face and moved farther into the hallway, avoiding the corridor’s single camera.
Arcin-17 was privately owned, which meant that its security was also privately owned. Due to some gray-area businesses that operated here, the complex’s owners had fought to keep it that way. It didn’t mean that the complex wouldn’t co-operate with the government. Even Marc admitted that the likelihood of them co-operating in their apprehension sat close to one-hundred-percent—but it provided one extra layer to ward off pursuit.
Besides, they hadn’t chosen it for its security protocols. They’d chosen it for its layout.
From its inception, it had never come even remotely close to what anyone would call straightforward or clean-cut. Each of the seventeen founding companies had hired its own architect and, for the most part, had then proceeded to not talk to each other about plans. The result combined a warren of hallways, theaters, two theme parks, three swimming pools, dormitories, the Hegir-Nuna branches of two universities, and more than five hundred restaurants, shops, and stalls into a tight-fitting, labyrinthine maze. One could spend an entire day in just one company’s section. Hell, she didn’t even know where the second theme park started, though she had seen one of the roller coasters loop through a walkway before.
In short, it was an excellent place to get lost in. And Marc had already broken the lock on the access door at the end of the hall.
They just had to heal Senton’s people and run. Simple, right?
Except for the part where Senton probably had the backing of the Alliance military behind him and planned to spring a trap on them.
The more she thought about it, the likelier it seemed.
But then, she had always been a pessimist. Or, well, she had been one since she and her sister had murdered themselves to freedom.
Karin shook her head again, then winced at the loud squeak the sole of her shoe made against the smooth floor as she turned. She didn’t like this plan. At all. And, despite Marc’s best efforts to hide her down what was possibly Arcin’s most deserted, empty, and forgotten corridor, she felt exposed. Antsy. Her fingers itched for the familiar interface of the Nemina’s dashboard. There, at least, she could run.
Funny how easy she’d switched into being a pilot. Barely a year out of flight school, and she felt more at ease on any bridge, nav deck, or cockpit than she did on solid land.
There, she was capable. She could do things.
Here? She couldn’t even fire a gun. And she was an out of shape runner.
Gods and saints. Why am I here?
Fortunately, before she had a chance to resume her pacing, a shadow moved across the mouth of the corridor. Her heart jumped against her ribs for a split second, but Marc’s tall profile and easy amble were easy to recognize.
He caught her eyes.
“We’ve made contact. Verina is bringing them up now.” He paused, giving her an appraising look. “How do you feel?”
Like there was an electrical current running through every single one of her nerves. She hadn’t hired on for anything close to this. They were supposed to be doing scrounging missions. Tame scrounging missions.
She blew out a breath, trying to shake the jitters from her hands. “I just want this over and done with.”
Marc, too, blew out a breath. The light played across his face, highlighting the roundness of his nose and lips, the slope of his cheek. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
At least Soo-jin’s people were done with, though that may be why her disguise itched so much. They’d met up with the Songbird people just over an hour ago, and she had acquired a set of fake glasses and a neo-punk hoodie that she suspected would fool precisely no one.
Jaxx and Verina, who had helped with their initial escape at Songbird, had hung around to help them here, too. Jaxx, a stocky boy who’d turned out to be much older than she’d thought, had control of a few doors and was playing lookout several floors below. Verina was to meet Senton and his family and play the role of guide until they were moderately sure they weren’t being followed. And to help with whatever Senton had up his sleeve.
If he even had anything up his sleeve.
Karin shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. Maybe they were all being disingenuous. Their mood toward Senton had been amiable up until he’d blackmailed them in the face of an Alliance boarding team, and she had noticed that his general description had declined. Soo-jin had been the least subtle, having gone from a relatively professional, neutral opinion to—what had it been, exactly? ‘Slimy-mouthed bastard?’
They were reading too much into it. And she was just worrying for nothing. He probably just wanted to heal his wife and daughter.
But the alternative—alternatives—were a little too possible and a lot too likely to be shaken away so easily, much less ignored.
Marc shifted toward her, hesitated for a second, then reached out to squeeze her shoulder. “It’ll be okay. It’ll be over soon.”
A small shock went through her at the gesture and, for a second, she struggled for what to say. In all the time they’d spent together, including the last few weeks where their rapport had moved from coworkers to friends, he’d never come across as the touchy-feely sort.
“I’ve heard that waiting is the worst part,” she said after a few moments. His hand felt warm on her shoulder. “In war.”
“Not in my experience.” His eyes shifted, as if he were remembering something, and the expression on his face stuttered, pinching together. His hand left her shoulder as he turned his gaze back to the mouth of the corridor.
With him facing away, she took a moment to get a good look at him, studying how the light fell across his face, the grim set of his jaw, the tightness of the muscles. He had a strong profile, and not just in the muscles that were now hidden beneath the light jacket that concealed the blaster he carried under the side of his chest.
Then they heard an echo of voices, and the moment was over.
Karin broke her stare as she recognized Senton’s mid-toned pitch coming up the hallway, irritation clear in his tone. He followed Verina around the corner, accosting her tall, thin figure with a burst of agitated body language and wide, sweeping gestures that, by the dry, disconnected blankness on her face, was not having his desired effect.
“We had a gods-damned bargain. Do you really think I’d throw away my chance to get them healed? I’m not stupid enough to risk that.”
“I’m sorry to say that enough people on our ship thought you were that stupid.” Marc leaned forward, not quite taking a step as he brought one hand up near his hip—his gun hand, she thought, ready to grab the blaster on the inside of the fabric
.
Senton’s lip curled. “Given your usual line of work, I am not surprised.”
If Marc was irritated by the insult, he didn’t show it. He’d likely been called a lot worse. Scroungers, after all, weren’t anywhere close to the top of the white market. Seen as carrion birds, picking at the bones of others, they worked in a kind of gray area. While the Nemina’s crew ran most of their sales through the Chariday auctions, their acquisition of the products was, while still completely legal, considered somewhat immoral.
Two people turned the corner behind him, and Karin’s attention snapped to them.
The Lost.
When the Shadows failed in their attacks, they disappeared. Sometimes, they lingered a bit, like a bad aftereffect, or drifted apart like a tattered cloud. Other times, they vanished like a mist, or a flash of black, here one second and gone the next.
When they succeeded, they made the Lost.
Karin had seen over a hundred of them now, but she didn’t think she’d ever get over their slow, eerie silence. Even without seeing their blacked-out eyes, they jangled at her senses. Moving at a casual shuffle, they weren’t so much listless as disinterested—the same way a goat or a cow might be disinterested in anything that wasn’t food, except lacking even those animals’ senses of self-preservation. She’d heard tales of Lost walking into water, or turning on stoves and burning themselves, or reaching up to touch live wires. They were like children. Very forgetful children who didn’t speak, didn’t eat and, as far as she’d heard, didn’t do anything except creep everyone the hell out.
Luckily, they didn’t need to. Whatever the Shadows had done put them in a kind of stasis. So long as that didn’t change, they were the most self-reliant people in the system.
And apart from that stasis, the only physical change showed in their eyes. They stared out, as dark as the blackest piece of space Karin had ever seen. Only her magical light ability, acquired through years of genetic manipulation and psychological blue-lighting, could combat it.