My hair was a startling snow-white colour, which I had pulled back in a braid. The ensemble was complete with a pair of velvet brocade boots that had cost more than I’d ever admit to. You’d never find these clothes in The Weald. Back home, the fashion was corsets, long skirts and lace gloves. I mean, lace gloves. Honestly. Don’t keep your fingers warm and impossible to get blood out of.
Squaring my shoulders, I approached the door that accessed Roper’s room. There was a chance I was going to have to knock him around some. If he were really stubborn, I’d have to break some bones. It meant tapping into the bitch inside of me, and she did love to come out and play. I twisted the handle and stepped into the room. Roper was sitting on the bed with his back to me, the woman kneeling in front of him. The door shut behind me with a click. The woman looked up from her unfortunate task, her flat eyes knowing the score. She wiped her mouth and slithered out the door like her stilettos were greased with butter.
“What—?” Roper turned and saw me.
Narrowing my eyes, I focused on Roper’s aura. It flickered dimly around his head, the colour of piss with spikes of purple: a weak man prone to violent acts. I blinked the aura away and tried not to grimace. Roper was even more ugly close up. Three stubs of horns mostly covered by greasy hair. His mouth was a little too wide and he had too many teeth for his jaw, some poking out crookedly from his lips.
Roper’s eyes clocked my hair and my duelling cane with its goat-head. His face went a shade of green and his mouth worked soundlessly. While I’d never met Roper, I was pretty sure he’d heard of me. White hair was pretty rare in The Weald.
“Hello, sunshine.” I gave him a cheerful wink. This was how I liked to greet most of my marks. Nice and upbeat and setting the tone. “Let me tell you how this is going to go, just so we can save some time. I’m going to ask you some questions. You’re going to pretend to be a hard-arse. We both know you’ll end up giving me what I want after a little slap and tickle. So how about we skip all that and you just cooperate?”
Roper jumped to his feet. Pants falling to his ankles, his Mr Winky bobbed up and down like it was happy to be outside. I arched an eyebrow at him. “Looks like you’re feeling the cold, Roper.”
He struggled to pull his pants up. I moved across the room, swept up my cane and cracked it down on Roper’s head. He squealed and reeled across the bed, clutching his ear. “Whaddya want? Whaddya want from me?”
“A satchel, Roper. You stole it a week ago. Has a nice gold emblem on the front? I think you know the one I mean. Why don’t you hand it over and we all get to go home.”
His eyes slid to my cane, breath hissing out from between his crooked grey teeth. “You work for the goat.”
“A satyr, Roper,” I corrected him. “A satyr is half goat. That’s a considerable difference. And ‘the goat’ prefers to be called Gideon. Or Mr. Gideon to you.”
Roper’s face contorted in pain. “I ‘ain’t done nothing to you. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Give me the satchel.”
Roper clutched his ear tighter and scowled some more. I tapped the end of my cane on the room’s thin carpet a couple of times, signalling my impatience. “Come on, Roper. I believe I’ve already given you my easy or hard way speech. I don’t give it twice.”
“What are you talkin’ about, ya crazy bitch?” Yellow spittle flew from his mouth, arching across the room. I stepped back, my upper lip curling with disgust. Roper was laughing now and it was a phlegm-like sound, bubbling up from his chest. “The only thing you’re getting today is dead.”
He gestured to me with his right hand. I froze. For a terrible moment, I thought he held salt and was casting. Then there was a mechanical snap. A gun shot out of Roper’s sleeve on a spring-loaded quick-draw rig. He aimed at my belly. “Put your hands high,” he said. “Don’t do nothin’ fresh.”
“Relax,” I said with a calm I didn’t feel. “Don’t make this worse. I just want what you took.”
Roper’s mouth twisted. “I knew you were gunning for me. I knew someone would come. You’re Gideon’s pet, the one who loves the Outlands. Who else was he going to send? People think Roper’s so stupid. But he’s not. There’s a bounty on your head, you know that? Benjamin the Bloody posted it. How about I turn in your pretty head instead?”
“You don’t want to do anything you’ll regret, now, do you?” I asked.
“Shut up.” His voice got all squeaky and indignant. “You just shut up!”
“I’m wearing very expensive boots, Roper. I don’t want to get blood on them.”
“I said, shut up!”
My stomach clenched as I realised the prick was going to make me show my hand and reveal my secret. I was going to have to use magic. Which meant I was going to have to get rid of the little shit.
“Relax, Roper,” I said. “Just relax.” We stared at each other for a beat. My heart kicked loud in my ears. Once. Twice. I threw myself to the right.
Roper gave a shout of surprise. I heard the crack of the gun and felt something bite my left ear. My shoulder hit the floor the same time my fingers slipped into one of my belt pockets, pinching some salt. I tossed it at Roper, just as he re-aimed his gun at me. I yelled a quick hex, my tongue tripping over the Sanskrit words. The air-born salt ignited with my will and the hex spat to life like a firecracker. Roper was thrown against the far wall, knocked clean out of his pants. He collapsed into a heap on the ground, heaving and gasping.
“Idiot.” I pushed myself to my feet and picked up my cane. “You stupid, stupid idiot.”
Roper lifted his head and drooled. He half-heartedly raised his arm to aim again. I crossed the room, drawing out the sword hidden inside my cane. With a grunt and a smooth golf swing, I sliced Roper’s arm off above the elbow. The limb bounced away with a fleshy sound, his fingers still twitching around the trigger.
“Shit! Shit!” Roper grasped at the bleeding stump of his arm. His heels rattled against the floor. “Look what you did!”
“Give me what I want.” I lifted the blade high and steeled myself. “Or you’ll lose more limbs.”
“Alright! Alright!” Amber-coloured blood was soaking the carpet under him. His head jerked to a crumpled backpack by the bed. “It’s there. It’s there.”
I lowered my dripping blade, walked to the backpack and checked it. My hands sorted through clothes and jewellery before finding the leather satchel at the bottom. I pulled it with a grim smile. Roper was staring at me, his face the colour of sweaty cheese.
“Is there anything missing?” I asked.
“You used the craft,” Roper whispered, mouth slack at the ends. “That’s impossible. No one can cast magic in the Outlands. No one. It’s one of the rules. Do you know what it means that you can cast out here?”
My knees popped as I stood, my bad leg giving a twinge of warning. I tossed the satchel on the bed, my lips pressed thin. Sure, no one was supposed to be able to cast out here. The medium of salt, combined with words of power, was a conduit to the provider of magic, the ley-lines. But the lines that fuelled the craft were thought to only exist in The Weald. Somehow, though, I was able to make it work here. One of my secrets, and it was one I didn’t share at any price. At least, not with the living. Roper might have survived the loss of his arm, but I couldn’t allow him to live now.
I bent over the decapitated arm, prying the gun loose from the rig. The weapon was a little Ruger LCP. Popping the magazine, I saw it was packed with nice shiny hollow point rounds. I punched the magazine back home and aimed the barrel at Roper’s head.
“How did you do it?” Roper stared up at me, eyes full of fear.
“I don’t know.”
“What kind of monster are you?”
“I don’t know,” I said again, then pulled the trigger.
Excerpt from The Danger Game by Caitlyn Nicholas
“It’s your last chance with the Vice Chancellor.”
“I said I’d be there.” Flick didn’t bother to hid
e her irritation. “I just won the man a million-dollar grant, what more does he want?”
“Your bubbly and fun personality?” There was amusement beneath Andy’s sarcasm.
Flick snorted. “All right. Okay. I’m leaving now.” She growled the words, and hit the off-button on her phone.
They both knew she lied.
She dropped the phone onto the desk. Then, scowling, she clicked on the icon that’d run the Bellona program. It crashed instantly, and took the computer with it.
“Awesome.” She threw herself back into her chair and stared at the ceiling panels, running the changes she’d made to the code through her mind. Realizing it’d be a waste of time to unpick what she’d done, Flick rebooted her computer and went in search of a clean copy of the program on the backup server.
There were two versions. Usually they only kept one, but she thought nothing of it, and after saving a copy to her hard drive, she opened it up.
She scanned quickly through the code, looking for the section she’d been working on, so preoccupied with figuring out how to manipulate it into doing what she wanted, she nearly missed the strange command. Her eye travelled straight past it. But then she hesitated and went back to the unusual group of letters. They hadn’t been there before.
A logic bomb? Some little joke Andy was playing?
She ran the command and it brought up a whole section of Bellona that she’d never seen before.
“Bloody hell —” For a moment she simply stared at the screen.
It was no joke.
Not only had she never seen it, but also couldn’t understand, or interpret it. Goosebumps prickled on her arms. Her computer understood, otherwise it couldn’t have run it. But she, who effortlessly programmed in everything from BASIC to C++, had never seen anything like it.
The section of code was written in a new programming language.
She grabbed a USB key, shoved it into the computer port, then with a couple of mouse clicks copied this altered version of Bellona. She should’ve been intrigued, or excited. A new programming language. It was unbelievable. But instead a sense of dread settled itself in her abdomen. Bellona was her program, she knew it inside and out. She’d spent thousands of hours working on it, too long to have any enthusiasm about weird changes she didn’t understand.
She needed to find Andy.
Flick burst out of her office, startling the lone student who sat at one of the machines in the computer lab, then hurried out of the ITC building. Even at a dogtrot it took ten minutes to get across campus to the Vice Chancellor’s building, which sat on a distant hill, hunched inimically against the vibrant energy of the students.
Andy would be at the Vice Chancellor’s cocktail party, celebrating the massive grant that Bellona had brought to the University. Slathering on the charm, basking in the glory and the congratulations, and convincing everyone that it was he, and he alone, who’d developed the cutting-edge cyber-war program.
Not that Flick minded, particularly. The Vice Chancellor’s social events were a trial that she avoided at every opportunity. Professor Andy Grey could have the limelight, he was welcome to it. She preferred life behind the scenes.
It was early evening and the cloying heat of the day still hung in the air. Though it was light enough to see, the roar of voices and thud of music that echoed from the Uni bar made Flick wonder if it was later than she’d thought. She dug in her jeans pocket for her phone to check the time and then swore quietly. She’d left it in the computer lab, along with her keys and swipe card. At least she had her wallet. She’d have to borrow someone else’s swipe later.
The security guard, whose main purpose was to keep students away from the Vice Chancellor, watched as she entered the building.
“Evening.” He smiled as she hurried past, and didn’t ask for her ID.
“Hi.” She waved vaguely at him, his face faintly familiar, then took the stairs two at a time, up to the function room where the party was being held. But she slowed as she came to the top, reluctant to face the hubbub of voices.
“Flick.”
Professor Andy Grey appeared out of the crowd and strode towards her, grinning like the idiot he was. Genius idiot. But idiot nonetheless.
“What did you do to Bellona?” She lowered her voice, aware that the security guard at the bottom of the stairs could probably hear them.
His confident grin faltered, and he glanced over his shoulder to the party. “What do you know?”
“What did you do, Andy? There’s a whole section written in a code I’ve never seen. How can a code I’ve never seen run perfectly on my computer? It’s impossible?”
He hesitated then reached up and pulled a pen out of her hair. Then another. “It’s no wonder I can’t find anything to write with.” He tucked them into the top pocket of his suit jacket.
“Stop it —” She stepped back a little and reached up to untangle another pen from her thick auburn hair. He eyed her for a moment and she handed it over. “Tell me what you did?”
“Don’t get your knickers in a knot. It’s just a thing I was working on. It’s meaningless.” His smile was warm, but Flick knew him well enough to hear the hint of insincerity in his voice.
“What I saw was a long way from meaningless.”
His eyes slid away from hers. “Come and talk to the Vice Chancellor, he’ll be so thrilled you’re here.” He reached out and tugged her arm gently.
Flick glanced beyond him to the party. “I want to know what’s going on with Bellona.” She pulled back from his grasp and he let go easily. “It’s too dangerous. We agreed we wouldn’t go there.”
“Yes, okay. I modified it, added a few things I’ve been working on. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
“But –”
“Tomorrow. I mean it Flick. Not now.”
His face creased into a stubborn frown, and she gave up. Pushing the subject would only irritate him. The conversation was closed.
“We’ll talk tomorrow then. First thing.” She turned to leave.
“No way.” He stepped into her path, ushering her towards the sound of refined chatter. “There is no escape for you now. Come and have wine.”
“I’m going home.”
“I meant what I said on the phone. The Vice Chancellor will be furious if you don’t show. Anyway, there are some interesting people here.”
Flick knew he was right. The Vice Chancellor, an insecure and occasionally vindictive man, often indulged her introverted ways. But he wouldn’t tolerate her absence if it made him look foolish. “All right. Give me a moment.”
She pulled out her hair tie, which held her hair back in a simple ponytail, and ran her hands through it. Two more pens fell onto the floor.
“Ready? This is the best I can do.”
“God Flick.” Andy watched her with unabashed admiration. “You’re so beautiful.”
She stared at him for a second, trying to figure out if he was being sarcastic or not. Then bent quickly, to pick up the pens, as heat flooded up from her chest. Beautiful?
Straightening she gave him a confused look. “Don’t be an idiot.”
Then she hurried away, towards the party. She stopped abruptly at the threshold of the room and took a slow breath. The place seethed with the glitterati of the University. Wealthy sorts, desperate to have buildings, libraries or even toilet blocks named after them, mingled eagerly with the cream of Academia. Who were all equally eager to acquire every cent of sponsorship money for their projects.
The Vice Chancellor spotted her and hurried over; his heavy academic robes embroidered with gold and silver flowed behind him. He sweated heavily in the close humidity.
“Professor Grey, you persuaded our star to be here.” He addressed Andy, who stood quietly behind her. “We were sure you’d be a no-show, like the other times.”
Flick smiled at him, the most charming one in her repertoire. Wasn’t it enough that she was part of a team that had, so far, brought millions of dollars of funding to th
e University? Why did he insist on parading her about like a prize poodle?
“I’m sorry I’m late. I’d just made a breakthrough on the Titan project and was finishing some things up. It’s such a pleasure to be here.” She lied easily.
“I’ll get you a drink.” Andy’s fingers lightly brushed her forearm. She nodded uncertain thanks at him. A drink would be good.
The evening proceeded at a glacial pace. The Vice Chancellor attached himself to her side, giving her no chance to slink away when no one was looking. He introduced her to person after person, and she made small talk about the late summer heat wave and asked about other people’s holidays. The clashing odours of different perfumes and the thick smell of cheap wine mixed horribly with the fifteen hours she’d spent staring at a screen and began to turn into a headache.
“What is this stuff?” Andy appeared by her side, and she handed him the glass of wine he’d passed to her an hour earlier. “It’s like vinegar.”
“It’s all they’re serving,” he said. “Cost cutting.”
“Is that her?” squawked a woman nearby. Flick felt her searing gaze and glanced towards the door.
“Here drink this.” Andy shoved his glass of orange juice into her hand.
She stared at it dubiously. “What’s in it?”
“Just drink it.”
Rayessa and the Space Pirates Page 12