Jaxon said. “Have you received the extra rations?”
The woman pulled the baby back to her chest with a hint of possessiveness that belied her former offer. “Most weeks.”
“Good to hear.” Jaxon pulled out three plastic credits from his wallet and passed them along to her. “We’re authorized to give you this one-time bonus.”
“Cash, huh?” Her eyes glinted. “That’s worth more than . . . I might be willing to have another. If it’s still a matter of repopulating the CORE. Just as long as my kids get that extra chance to live on the outside.” She smiled, showing several missing teeth. “I’m sorry about the flu epidemic in Estlantic, but I’d be stupid if I wasn’t glad for my kids—or the girls at least.” She glanced down at the toddler clinging to her. “They’re good kids. The baby’s only screaming ’cuz she’s got a stuffed nose.”
Epidemic? A higher chance at leaving the Coop? Reese understood the woman’s words, but they made no sense. In fact, the only thing that did make sense besides the baby’s cold was the sketch of the burly, naked man she received from the woman’s mind. Reese knew exactly what that indicated. Oscar’s father might be dead, but the woman had found a replacement lover, who might or might not be the father of the other two children. Now Reese would have to sketch the man to get the image out of her head.
“We’ll keep that in mind,” Jaxon said smoothly. “Look, we were wondering. Do you know if any of your neighbors have been here long?”
“Most of ’em been here forever. I just came when I was expecting her.” She pointed at the child grabbing her leg. “I used to live a couple districts over. I don’t really know anyone here.”
“No one at all?” Reese found that hard to believe, but the urge to draw the man she’d seen pushed at her, and it was all she could do to focus on the question.
The woman hesitated briefly before swinging her head back and forth. “Nope. I don’t get out much. I have to pick up the kids after work, and then I’m too tired to do anything but shovel food into their mouths and pile them in bed.” She moved back a step, giving them a glimpse into the house. Reese saw that the Teev was on, the holo filling up most of the room. Nothing about it was familiar, except for the scarred table, which she was sure was the same one she’d sat at with her father and Cecelia.
All at once, Reese had no desire to see more. She certainly didn’t want to squeeze inside the closet that had been her bedroom, or check to see if the initials she’d carved into the wall by the bed were still there.
“We’re also here in the neighborhood looking for a woman named Dani Balak,” she said. “Ever heard of her?”
The baby started crying again. “I don’t think so,” the woman said, obviously distracted by her child. “Sorry.”
“Thank you for your time.” With a nod, Reese turned on her heel and stalked back to the narrow road, leaving the men to their own farewells.
Once she reached the road, she took out her sketchbook and let her hand go to work with the pencil, one eye on the page and one studying the houses around her. The neighbor to the right wasn’t a good choice. Not many men made it past sixty in a colony, and the man who’d lived there had been old even back then. Jaxon’s house on the left would have new people, and she couldn’t remember the people in the houses across the street. She did recall that the woman who’d lived next door to Jaxon had been a mean old bat. Not promising.
The best place to begin was the house two down from Jaxon’s old house where the Jammers had lived. The woman might be dead, but she’d had two boys who’d come up on their list as being alive and still living in the Coop.
“I don’t get it,” Eagle said as the men came up behind her. “Why are they paying her to have children?”
“It doesn’t make sense.” Jaxon agreed. His eyes went to the naked man on Reese’s sketchbook. “Uh, is there something you’re not telling us?”
She finished the drawing, ripped it out and handed it to him. “The baby’s father. Maybe the father of both girls. I think she likes him.”
“I see.” He folded it with a smirk and shoved it into a pocket.
The compulsion to draw disappeared, and Reese breathed an inner sigh of relief. “Let’s try the Jammer brothers.”
“They’ll still be here, if they aren’t dead,” Jaxon said.
Eagle’s grin vanished for the first time. “They’re as mean as Breakdown, though. Remember, they’re the ones who tried to get us to join their crew after you two left.”
“Good thing we brought our guns.” Reese followed Jaxon as he started down the narrow street. Eagle fell into place beside her, looking thoughtful.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“I just realized I know that woman in your old house. Carla, I think is her name. She was in the level behind us. Remember the one who always came in that pink flowered dress?”
“The one who had a crush on the janitor?” Reese thought back. “Doesn’t seem like the same person.”
“It’s her.”
As he spoke, a flash of the young Carla came to Reese, and with resignation, she pulled her pencil from her pack again. A few lines had the girl’s face down. “Is this her?” She gave him the sketchbook.
“It’s her back then. The angles of the cheekbones match perfectly, though they were obviously smaller then. Her eyes are the same too. She has changed a lot—looks more like forty than our age.”
“Well, she’s had three kids that we know of.” Now that Reese had the sketch, the resemblance with the adult woman was apparent. She’d done enough age progression on images to see Eagle was right about the underlying bone structure.
He smirked. “Maybe her ability is reproduction—if she’s like us.”
“Well, that would be a good thing since apparently there’s an epidemic to recover from.”
“So you caught that too.”
Ahead of them, Jaxon had stopped walking, his hand inching toward his hidden gun, but he relaxed as a group of about a dozen kids emerged from between two houses. Ten years old, if that, but they swaggered when they walked, as if they owned the neighborhood. And maybe they did. Reese saw the flash of a metal blade. But however big and bad this crew was among their peers, they instinctively veered away from the adults. One of the tallest boys stared at them as the group hurried past, hatred burning in his eyes. Reese had to stifle the urge to arrest him just for the belligerence of his attitude.
No one answered at the Jammer house, but as they turned to leave, the man in Reese’s drawing came down the narrow street, walking toward them with hunched shoulders. The bulging sauce skin he carried hinted at his plans for the evening. Reese thought he looked decidedly better in clothes than without.
“It’s Witt,” Eagle murmured. “I thought your sketch looked familiar.”
Witt was the oldest of the Jammer boys, and also the meanest. He’d busted more noses at school than anyone else. Reese didn’t recognize his reddened face, which appeared defeated and old, but the way he skulked down the street awoke inside her a long-forgotten urge to flee.
He jerked his head at them, glancing suspiciously at the house. “What you doin’ here?”
Jaxon stepped toward him. “Hey, Witt, it’s me, Jaxon. I used to live down a couple houses. And you remember Reese, right? She lived next to me. This is our friend, Eagle. You might not remember him, but he was always hanging out with us.”
Witt frowned, squinting at Jaxon, until realization dawned. “Right, you’re the hooker’s kid.”
Jaxon barely flinched. “How’ve you been? How’s your brother—Keag, wasn’t it?”
Witt’s gaze had shifted to Reese, squinting as if trying to place her, but now jerked back to Jaxon. “He’s dead.” The blunt words were devoid of emotion, except for a brief crack in his voice.
“Sorry to hear it. How’d he die?” Jaxon asked.
“Fell from the wall yesterday. Don’t know how he got up there, but I blame it on the CORE.”
A sketch of Witt’s dead bro
ther flashed across Reese’s mind—hairy arms stretched out, head bleeding, his body obviously broken.
“He was never the same since enhancement,” Witt added. His fingers toyed with the lid of the sauce, and his tongue wet his lips. Reese didn’t blame him one bit; after that image, she badly wanted a drink too. She clenched her fists tightly at her side.
“I’m really sorry,” Jaxon said. “Look, we came here to find a friend of ours. You remember a black girl with white hair? Name’s Dani Balak. You know what happened to her?”
Witt’s mouth pursed for a moment before abruptly spitting on the ground. “Oh, yeah. I know that warthog-faced lumper. Beat the saca out of some of my crew. If I ever see her again, I’ll kill her.”
“When was the last time you saw her?” Reese asked.
Witt smirked. “Not since she leveled out of school. If I had, she’d be dead, like I said. But Carla—she’s the one who lives in Reese’s place—saw her at least once. She got an offer for the baby.”
“Dani’s buying babies?” Reese couldn’t help blurting out her surprise.
Witt’s forehead wrinkled. “Not if I have anything to say about it.” He glanced down at his sauce and then back at them. “Anyway, I thought you guys got out. Guess that was wrong. Funny I ain’t seen you around.”
“I went to live elsewhere after my mom died,” Jaxon said, his calm voice doing nothing to alleviate Reese’s urge to get her pencil so she could sketch Witt’s dead brother. “Do you know anyone who did make it out?”
Witt shook his head. “My brother had a buddy who left. But he sent Keag a message saying he thought someone was following him. When we went to talk to his mom, she hadn’t heard from him, and he’d promised to come back for her. She complained to the enforcers, but no one could find him. He just disappeared.”
“When was this?” Reese asked.
Witt made a face as he considered her question. “Uh, guess it was four or five years ago. Or somewhere around there. One enforcer even tried to convince his mom she was making up having a son. So we all think he’s dead. And he ain’t the only one who’s gone missing.” He cleared his throat and spat on the ground again. “It’s all a lie. All of it. No one ever really leaves the Coop unless it’s that final trip to the furnace.”
He flipped the lid up on his sauce skin and took a deep gulp, avoiding their eyes until he’d swallowed. “We’ll all work in those factories until we die, and that’s the end. The colonies—at least this one—ain’t a leg up, it’s one of them prisons you see on the old Teev reruns. No one can ever leave. The sooner you understand that, the better off you’ll be.”
Chapter 17
JAXON STARED AT Witt, digesting the man’s words. First the girl, Nova, and now Witt saying no one ever left the colonies. People he’d known were missing. The anxiety in his gut increased. How had he missed this for so long? He was a detective, for CORE’s sake, and yet he’d been so obsessed with fighting crime that he hadn’t realized the people he worked for were committing even bigger crimes.
Except he had no proof, and no motivation. Not yet.
But he trusted his gut.
“Thanks,” he said to Witt. “Nice seeing you.”
“Yeah, see ya around.” Witt turned and crossed the few steps to his front door, lifting his skin and guzzling sauce as he went. Jaxon pursed his lips in revulsion, reminded of Colony 5 and the sour stench of sauce on his foster father’s breath as he screamed out his daily frustrations.
Reese and Eagle were staring at him, as if he’d zoned out. He swallowed the lump in his throat and said, “Guess we go back to see Carla.”
“What’s Dani want with babies?” Reese wondered. When no one answered, she took out her sketchbook and began to draw. Her hurried, almost angry strokes told him she’d seen something she wasn’t pleased about bringing to life. He wondered if it was as horrifying as Ty with a broken neck. Whatever it was, she didn’t show him the resulting sketch.
Carla was just as slow to get to the door as she had been for their first visit, but this time the baby wasn’t in her arms. She didn’t contain her surprise when she saw them. “You again? Got more money for me, I hope?”
“We just had a chat with my old buddy, Witt,” Jaxon responded. “Interesting thing is, he says you do know Dani.”
“You’re friends with Witt?”
“I used to live there.” He thumbed at the house next door.
She leaned forward. “Really? I don’t know you. Did we go to the same school?”
“Yes, and you should remember Dani,” Reese said. “Black skin, white hair. She hung out with the twins.”
“I remember them. Dark hair, slanted eyes, right?” Her mouth opened. “Wait,” she said to Jaxon. “You’re the hooker’s son.”
Jaxon slowly clenched his fists, mentally counting to ten. “Have you seen Dani? We’re her friends. She’ll want to see us.”
“Well, it wasn’t really her,” she said, glancing back into the house as a crash sounded behind her. “Mandy,” she hollered, “get away from that or no more Teev today!” She refocused on Jaxon. “She sent one of her guys, is all. He told me she had a place for the girls, if I needed.” Her voice lowered. “Look, Witt hates her for something he says she did years ago, but she gives us stuff that helps us get by—food, medicine, iTeevs. Things are bad for us regular people, and Dani helps.”
“Does she live nearby?”
“No one knows. Or if they do, they ain’t saying.”
Jaxon stifled his frustration. “How do we find her?”
“You don’t. She finds you.”
Well that sounded promising. “What aren’t you telling us?”
“Me?” Carla blinked a few times. “Look, I know my place. I’m doin’ my best for the CORE. Why don’t you go back and tell them that?”
The stubbornness in her voice told Jaxon he was getting no further without taking her into custody, and if he did that, he had no idea what would happen to her children. “If you think of anything more,” he said, handing her a card with his iTeev number, “let me know.”
She stared at it, her face paling. “You’re an enforcer? Does that mean . . . you got out?”
He nodded. “Yes, I did.”
They started down the walk, leaving a gaping Carla staring after them. When they were halfway to the neighbor’s, she shouted, “Is there really an epidemic then? Do my girls really have a better chance to get out than I did?”
Jaxon didn’t have an answer, and by the slamming of her door, Carla didn’t seem to expect one.
“Let’s talk to the other neighbors,” he said. “If Dani is somehow connected with this neighborhood, we need to get her attention.”
Fifteen more houses and nine conversations later, they had no more information. Except they did notice a general clamming up when they mentioned Dani Balak. No one knew anyone who’d left the Coop and was living on the outside, but almost everyone knew of someone who had been destined for outside but had gone missing.
“Maybe they’ve all heard about the same person,” Eagle suggested, but the levity had gone from his voice.
Only at the last house did one wizened old man chuckle somewhat crazily and say, “Dani Balak is just a myth. She don’t exist. And if you ain’t from around here, you’re better off getting out before they lock you in and throw away the key. If I was you, I wouldn’t come back.”
The next instant they were staring at his closed door.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Reese said. “We’ve verified that people are missing and learned that Dani’s helping people. Maybe.”
Eagle snorted. “Or buying babies.”
“When you saw Dani in your premonition yesterday,” Reese said to Jaxon, “was it in Amarillo City? Could you tell?”
“It looked like she was standing in front of the holo walls in the division conference room. Or someplace similar. I can’t say for sure. But both of you were there. I get the impression you were working on something together.”
&
nbsp; Reese considered for a moment. “Well, we haven’t talked to the enforcers here. Maybe that’s our next step. Snoop around to see what they might know.”
Jaxon didn’t feel excited at the suggestion, and apparently Eagle felt the same because he said, “Hey, first we need to go to the transfer station.”
“Why?” Reese asked.
“Because we might never have another chance to revisit our old stomping grounds.”
“I’d like to see it too,” Jaxon said.
Reese rolled her eyes, but a smile tugged on her lips. “Okay, but no swimming.”
They wound through the houses, retracing steps they hadn’t taken for decades but that were still ingrained in their minds. They passed many houses and were stared at by numerous children with differing levels of interest or suspicion.
The old rope they’d used to get over the wall was long gone, and the rickety wooden ladder someone had since cobbled together didn’t look strong enough to carry their weight. Before Jaxon could consider an alternative, Eagle shrugged off his pack and began digging through it. “Don’t worry. I got this.”
From his pack, he pulled out a fist-sized bundle, which turned out to be an enforcer-issued rope ladder—a decided improvement on the one they’d made from clothing twenty years ago. He launched the rope with its metal hooks over the wall, pulling the slack until it caught and held.
Jaxon flashed Eagle a grin. “Just like old times.”
“We probably should have stopped at the enforcer division for keys,” Reese said, but her voice told him she was anticipating this as much as he was. Too bad he hadn’t brought the pre-Breakdown tech Nova had used last night. That would be fun to use.
They were up over the wall in record time, the required weekly efficiency training coming into good use. Jaxon was the last one over. They stood gazing at their past, and it appeared, at first glance, that nothing had changed in the decades since they’d last stood on that spot.
Jaxon started for the round grate over the water to see if it was as large as in his memory—but as he approached, it was obvious something was different. “It’s cemented over,” he said.
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