Skinner Luce

  “And then,” Bedrosian dances his fingers above his chest, fluttering them skyward. “That was when I found out about servs.”

  “Lemme guess. He thought we were demons.”

  “No. He thought you were an alien invasion. He was picking servs up whenever he could, with the help of three of his cronies, interrogating them, and then executing them.”

  “Interrogating,” Lucy repeats slowly.

  “I know. It wasn’t pretty. It’s how they’d learned about Nafikh, the Gate, all of it. But it was distorted through this lens of an alien threat. In his mind, the servs were all lying, see. They weren’t slaves, they were foot soldiers. The Nafikh weren’t just visiting, but here for reconnaissance. They were setting up funds, making alliances with human traitors, that kind of thing. The Qadir were Their generals.”

  “You believed all this crap?”

  “It’s about as crazy as the actual truth,” he snorts. “But yeah. I believed it, for a while.”

  She eyes him. “Does that mean you helped?”

  He drinks, then bares his teeth in pain, the coffee still too hot. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  “By torturing helpless servs?”

  “We’ve all got our share of regrets,” he replies.

  It takes a moment for her to gather his meaning. “You can’t compare. Don’t even try.”

  “I suppose so,” he concedes. There is a pause. “Anyway, eventually, you come to a tipping point. The voice in my heart finally got louder than the arguments in my head. I knew it was wrong, what Amo Iakov was doing. All I saw were scared, broken wrecks, one after the other. So I set out to change his mind. This is my Amo Iakov, for Chrissake, we play tric-trac on Friday nights with a bottle of vodka. But then, he took down a kid. Couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen. I didn’t know about it till after it was over. That one, I think it shook him up. Because after all, you are made perfect.”

  He tests his coffee, then takes a few bigger swallows, wipes his mouth.

  “And that was it, for me. It was like a door opened, I stepped through, and it closed behind me. I kept walking and I found a sentry. I explained to her what had been going on and that it needed to be stopped.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Next thing I know, I’m in a basement myself, and a couple of them worked me over like you would not believe. I gave them every piece of information I had stored in my brain. Anything they asked, I replied, just so they’d stop. But I deserved it,” he nods, “I know I did.”

  “Is that why you limp?”

  “It is.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Amo Iakov disappeared, along with his friends. Their bodies were found a few months later up in Revere. They’d been tortured, then shot in the head, execution-style.”

  So he did understand how she felt, turning on everyone. Though by the clenched-up way he spoke those words, he’s a good deal more burdened. As well he should be. She’s having a hard time wrapping her mind around him taking part in those sick acts. How many, she wants to ask. How.

  But she doesn’t want to know.

  She says, “How come the Gate forgave you?”

  He huffs at this. “They didn’t. They use me to investigate serv business on the low. The day my usefulness expires, I will get my due.”

  “You really think that?”

  “Lucy,” he chides, amused, “are you really asking?”

  She holds herself a little tighter, bending over her arms. Her breaths puff white. “So you’re like us, basically.”

  “If by that you mean I, too, live under the Gate’s boot, then yes.”

  “You hate them.”

  “There’s no point. Like hating a machine.”

  She hasn’t thought of it that way before. It rings true. The Gate just performs its function, day in, day out. It doesn’t let anything stand in the way of that function, which is to keep the Nafikh happy and in line on every visit.

  No wonder they don’t give a shit about a dead serv here, another one there.

  Bedrosian pours out the remainder of his coffee, splattering brown across the slush. He crushes the cup, tosses it at the bin, misses. “We’d better get a move on,” he says, and tromps over to the car. Once he’s started the engine, he drops his head back against the headrest, eyes closed. Slowly, Lucy climbs down off the table, stiff and cold. She collects his cup and drops it in the bin with her own, turns around. Without warning her chest is a searing nugget of pain, whirling faster, hotter, before exploding.

  A van roars to a stop next to his car.

  “Watch out!” she screams.

  She sees his face turn towards her, open with surprise. The van door slides open and two sentries jump out. One of them is Gabriel. The relief she always feels when she sees him transforms instantly to fear when she reads the disgust on his face.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” he says, striding over to her. The other sentry, it’s Sina from the Rambo Service, is crooking her finger at Bedrosian, indicating he should get in the van. Lucy hears him asking why. “But no, it’s really you. You have broken my heart, you little treacherous bitch.”

  Before Lucy can utter a sound he’s on her, lifting her up by the neck. She gags, all the pain from earlier flooding up.

  Then finds herself slammed onto her feet, pinned in place by his grip. Her teeth feel like they might crack to pieces, he’s crushing her jaw with such force. When he speaks, spit flies onto her face.

  “You will be executed for this!”

  “For what?” she ekes out through her clenched jaw. “What did I do?”

  “Where is he?”

  “Who?” she begs. Her eyes drag this way and that, seeking Bedrosian. She can’t see him. He was in the car, and now he’s gone.

  “Where is Theo Elander?” Gabriel thunders.

  “I don’t know!” she sobs. “I don’t understand—can’t you find him?”

  His dark eyes bore into her, peeling her apart. “He has taken a Nafikh, do you hear me? He has a Nafikh!”

  Everything goes dead still. She can feel her heartbeats, each one a lucid thud. The pain of the Source is obliterated by the high hum in her head.

  “Where. Did. He. Take. Her.” With each word, Gabriel jolts her, hard.

  She crumples, black washing over her, a cold sweeping wave. She almost faints, but he keeps her upright. She stumbles along, propelled by his grip, and then he picks her up and flings her inside the van onto the hard metal floor, leaps in after her. The door slams shut and the van careens backwards.

  She clutches at the wall, trying to pull herself up, unable to make out his dark features in the dim light. “Gabriel, I don’t know anything! I swear! Are you sure it’s even Theo?”

  He looms over her, legs planted in a wide stance against the van’s motion. “Ernesto Vaja was in on it, so yeah, it’s your Theo. Did he ever say anything to you?”

  She shakes her head. “But Theo took Ernesto out,” she says, miserable under his increasingly visible glower. “Gabriel, I swear, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, then, you’d better start thinking, Lucy Hennessey. You’ll have to do better than that for the Qadir.”

  He backs off, lowers into a crouch, phone to his ear. Her body slackens against the wall, and she curls up against it, her bones rattling with every bump and turn. It’s not Sina driving. She must have gone with Bedrosian in his car. But no. He is here. Maybe she didn’t want to see, at first. He’s in the far corner, unconscious, his face a bloody mess. His huge body lolls this way and that with the movement of the van. Lucy stares, trying to make out if he’s breathing. She concludes that he is, but her worry’s going strangely abstract, meaningless. They’re going to the Gate, and this fact slices all else away.

  IV

  “GET OUT,” GABRIEL SAYS.

  Lucy levers herself up off the van floor. She’s weak, sore all over. She hears Bedrosian groaning as Gabriel rouses him. She steps out ont
o gravel and snow, squinting in the harsh sunlight, trying to get her bearings. They’re parked at a loading ramp, behind a massive brick warehouse. The river’s nearby. There are weedy asphalt lots to either side, empty and windswept with snowdrifts. The main road’s a distance away. There’s no one about.

  She takes a few steps, rounds the back of the van. A biting wind whips her hair around her face. Beyond the corner of the warehouse, a walkway leads to a long, low white building, windows in rows. She numbly takes in the covered portico, dead plants in clay pots at either column, the smattering of cars parked across the way. The name JetSet Limo Rentals is stenciled on a window.

  She turns around to see Bedrosian clambering out of the van. By the looks of it, Sina cracked a few of his ribs; he’s sweating, pale, and wheezing. He wasn’t kidding about not being forgiven. Gabriel leads them up the stairs to the loading dock. Bedrosian huffs behind her, helping himself along with the railing. “Lucy,” he whispers. “I bought you out. Don’t you forget that.”

  “I know,” she says over her shoulder. He seems to need to hang onto that fact, and who is she to pop his bubble. She wonders if he’ll get his money back, or if he’s not getting out of here either. The overhead door rolls up with an awful metallic racket, and two sentries who look pissed as hell come outside. Gabriel asks, “Where are they?”

  “First’s in observation, Second’s with the Nafikh that just came a while back.”

  Gabriel pushes Lucy towards the interior. “Not you,” she hears one of the sentries say. She looks back, finds Bedrosian standing awkwardly between them, his form a dark outline against the blue sky. The door’s clattering back down, and Lucy stops, anxious at Bedrosian being left with those two. Gabriel takes her by the elbow. “He’s not your concern. That way, hurry.”

  The ceilings rise up in a daze of gloom and dust. The dirty windows allow in some light, the rest provided by buzzing fluorescents. They go up a worn wooden ramp leading to a freight elevator. Gabriel hammers the elevator button with impatience. Another ramp leads down to the main floor, where rows of shelves are laden with shipping crates. There are guys in overalls standing around, making notes on clipboards.

  “What is all this?” Lucy asks.

  “Imports from South America.”

  His flat tone forbids further questions. It’s bewildering that the Gate would need to pull income from real-people business. Nafikh visits are funded by serv enterprises—drug trafficking, grabs, running whores, and all the rest of it. But imports? Limo rentals? It leaves her unsettled; the whole place does, with its dilapidated fixtures and paint peeling off the walls. A few hundred years ago it was probably bustling with workers. Now, the few guys in sight are servs with no paycheck or family and no interest in the goods under their care.

  Gabriel has to nudge her into the elevator because she’s going wobbly with fear again. Inside, she comes face-to-face with herself in the brushed metal wall: skinny body, stringy hair, scared face. She pulls her fingers through her hair, then realizes the Qadir probably won’t be influenced by how she looks. She lowers her hand.

  “How much will it hurt?” she asks.

  “It’s about as bad as coming up on a Nafikh,” he says. “They might let you get dosed.”

  “Can’t you tell them I don’t know anything?”

  The quaver in her voice shames her, but she can’t help it. Gabriel looks away. She wonders where Bedrosian was taken, tries to put him out of her mind. He’s been through it before. He’ll make it out. She should be more worried for herself.

  The elevator lurches to a stop and the door slides open.

  They step out into a narrow corridor running the length of the building, doorways set at intervals. The walls are unfinished particle board, the doors plain wood. It has the air of a construction site, but some doors are open and Lucy glimpses plain metal beds and tables, some stuff hanging on the walls, images torn from magazines, a few books. Window cutouts reveal only empty space, some interior part of the warehouse. The rooms must be sentry quarters, is all Lucy can figure. There are what look like offices, too: old desks, wooden chairs, lamps without shades.

  “I thought you all had it better than this,” she says.

  He gives her a dry look over his shoulder. “Yeah, champagne with dinner and a few cigars after.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Every spare penny goes for the visits,” he shrugs.

  She’s unable to ask more questions because her chest suddenly spasms. She steels herself against the steadily increasing pain. They’ve traveled halfway around the building, she calculates, and by the time they’ve gone ten more steps, she’s hunched over, her hands in fists. Gabriel ignores her struggle, for which she’s grateful, because it’s bad enough without having to endure his pity. She’d like to just sink down to her knees and buckle over, pass out from the fireworks lighting up her chest, her limbs on fire, every muscle tautened against the burn.

  “Ready?” Gabriel asks, his hand on a door they’ve reached without her noticing. “You should know this Qadir’s on the fritz, O.K.? He’s already pissed. Don’t fuck around with him.”

  Like I’d ever. She nods, unable to speak. It’s news to her that Qadir can fritz.

  He goes in first, so all she sees for a moment is the broad block of his back. She hears the distant crackle of his walkie. She’s sucking air hard now, and it’s noisy, but she can’t help it. He steps aside.

  The room is a little more finished than the rest, with white walls and a fringed carpet. At a table over to the left, a serv sits with a laptop. He glances up, leaving a brief impression of dark eyes magnified behind lenses. A window, this one finished with glass and a frame, gives onto the same dim, empty space as the others. Lucy glimpses scaffolding across the way, staircases, rows of windows.

  “Esh hun talar Elander?”

  “Aji,” Gabriel says, and he turns Lucy by the shoulder, pointing her in the right direction.

  A figure moves towards them from the other side of the room, where she glimpses a couch and a coffee table, another smaller carpet. He’s got a cane; it raps the floor loudly with every step. She blinks, her vision blurring from tears, because she’s petrified now, she can’t help it, she can’t hold it together. The Qadir is gigantic, like the Nafikh are when They first visit Earth, Their bodies unnaturally oversized. But the Qadir doesn’t have the animal, precise grace of the Nafikh. He’s awkward and slow, shuffling with all his weight on the cane. It must be because he’s fritzing. She doesn’t want to look up from those massive black shuffling shoes and the ebony shine of the cane, but she can’t help herself. The sight of him causes her to cringe, backing into Gabriel, who stands there like a wall, preventing escape. The Qadir is monstrous, his face scarred with taut red patches, as if he was dunked in boiling water. His mouth drags down to one side in a leering smile. Wisps of white hair are combed across his skull. He’s dressed in fancy clothes, the sort the Nafikh prefer, a burgundy satin shirt and dark, glittery pants, and they hang on his bony, trembling frame.

  But for all the signs that he’s on the way out, his eyes are the same bright, horrible pools sucking at her, a whirling abyss from which she has to retreat, she has to run. But her movements are like the frivolous battings of an insect against Gabriel’s solid bulk.

  “Hold still,” Gabriel says, annoyed.

  She obeys instantly, clutching his arm.

  The Qadir comes closer. His clothes release the odors of sweat and rotten food and dampness. She can’t imagine why he smells this way. Someone should tell him. But he’s a Qadir, maybe that’s how they smell. Or maybe it’s because he’s fritzing. She’s never witnessed a fritz. All the dying she’s seen, it’s been in Service.

  She crumples, the world going black from the pain. Gabriel hauls her up, shakes her.

  “Does it hurt, to be near me?” the Qadir inquires. His deep voice has a gurgle, like he’s got something stuck in his throat.

  “Yes,” she whispers, her chest a roiling pot,
the boil spilling into her arms, to her fingertips.

  He tilts his head back to look down his cheekbone at her. “Do you want relief?”

  “Yes,” Lucy begs.

  “You do not deserve it.”

  Lucy sways and teeters, unable to think of a response.

  “Where is Theo Elander?”

  Gabriel hoists her up again, as she is almost on her knees. She shakes her head. “I swear,” she whispers. “I don’t know.”

  There is an instant of shear mind-melting agony, and then Lucy discovers herself on her back, the Qadir looming over her. She squeezes shut her eyes, curls up, anticipating another blow. “I swear,” she tries to say, but her voice is no more than a whisper.

  “There’s a place in Maine,” a voice intrudes. Lucy’s shuddering so hard she can hardly hear. “It’s in the information she provided, but there’s no address. Ask her the address.”

  Lucy’s mouth opens and closes. She hears Gabriel speaking in Nafikh, then the Qadir responds. She senses the heat of someone closing in, and she curls up tighter, locking herself up like a clam. But it’s Gabriel, not the Qadir. He lifts her arm, and she feels the cool slide of the needle into her skin. She could weep. She gasps, staring hard at the floor, waiting for the relief. It comes so slowly, a tanker edging over the horizon, the bright expanse an endless crossing, it will never happen, she’ll die right here, it wasn’t enough.

  But then, at last, the pain begins to recede, the waves slipping forward, then back, retreating farther with every breath. Exhaustion sets in. Her body is a limp, ruined blob. Gabriel reaches under her, pulls her to her feet. “Get it together,” he commands. The Qadir watches, leaning hard on his cane, leaking his odors of disuse and age and sickness. He brims with anger not just directed at her, Lucy now intuits, but at his own weakness. “What is the address?” he demands.

  Oh God, she thinks. Here we go again. She’s so exhausted, the relief from the pain is so immense, she could just pass out. But she needs to answer, even if she doesn’t know, so the Qadir won’t strike her again.