by Rose Francis
A long ladder led to a catwalk a story and a half off the ground. The catwalk ended before one of the moving tubes, and wasn’t within jumping distance of any others. But anything was better than nothing, Christine reasoned as the Engineers approached them, batons out. She shoved Ilsa ahead of her up the ladder.
“Halt. You’re wanted for questioning in the theft of several items—” Christine blanched. So she had been the one caught out and recognized, not Ilsa. “—Belonging to Poca nobiltà Benito Torres, of house Aureum.” Now something was clearly not right. Christine knew Aureum’s reputation, and knew to steer clear of them. She had certainly never taken anything of theirs. But Ilsa was shaking as Christine caught up with her. The woman had nearly lost her grip when she heard the name. Ilsa was a thief? How stupid was she, to rob that family while pregnant? Had she thought that would make them go easier on her?
Ilsa managed to climb onto the platform, though she hardly seemed able to hold herself up. Christine scampered up swiftly after her, used to dodging among the catwalks and shimmying up ladders and walls. She realized the guards would only be seconds behind them, and yanked one of the smaller tubes that moved in the gap over. She looped it around Ilsa’s waist and told the other woman, “Run and jump.”
As Ilsa neared the edge, Christine shoved her with all her strength. Ilsa flew across the space, carried the last portion of the way by the tube. Christine hoped she could catch herself before she slid off, or before the tube came loose. She didn’t have time to watch Ilsa’s landing, not with the Engineer at the top of the platform and his friend behind him.
Christine drew her knife and lowered herself into a fighter’s stance. The guard looked momentarily taken aback. His buddy clambered up next to him, saw Christine readying for a battle, and his eyes widened. “Shit. Is that the cunt that robbed the Level 5 Guild last month?” Christine moved her eyes from guard to guard, wondering whether it was better to attack, or better to jump towards freedom and hope she could catch a pipe or something to break her fall. The second guard rushed towards her, his baton aimed at her knees.
She dodged it and swiped at him with the knife, but he blocked it with his baton. The knife clunked against the weapon and nearly stuck. She didn't want to leave it, but she was exposed and couldn't continue to fight without it. She tugged one last time, and it came free. She slashed hurriedly and caught the first Engineer across the throat.
Fuckfuckfuck, she thought. Now she’d done it. No one lived long after assaulting an Engineer. They were too important to the Pocas to permit any Lower Level worker to harm them. But this one was definitely dying. The torrent of blood that sprayed onto her schoolgirl uniform as he fell onto her attested to that.
The second guard hesitated a moment in shock, and Christine slashed at him one last time to get him to back up. He easily deflected it with his baton. When she felt the knife stick into the baton, she turned and lept, rather than attempt to pull it loose. For a moment, the feeling of air under her stomach was sickening. Then Christine collided with the largest pipe. She hurried to shimmy further up it, to a catwalk that connected the platform Ilsa had reached to the main silo. The pipe lurched beneath her feet. She nearly slid off, her bare feet slick with blood. At the last second, she caught herself and jumped for solid ground.
She ran forward and found Ilsa a short distance ahead, frozen in shock at the violence she’d witnessed. Christine looked back over the gap to see the remaining guard taking the bleeding man's pulse. He hadn’t noticed where they landed.
Christine tugged Ilsa towards the workers’ doorways at the top of the platform that lead to the outside world. The doors existed to enable workers to check both ends of pipes high up, but Christine didn’t know if there was any way down from the other side. At least they’d be out of the Engineers' sight, though, for when more showed up.
Four
On the other side of the repair hatch, there was no ladder. Christine looked anxiously around to see if they might find any scaffolding, or even any leftover tools to hide among, but it was bare. The Engineers would surely find them here when they ran out of other places to check. The wall was smooth, mostly metal rather than brick, so she couldn’t find handholds. But there was a dumpster below them, probably for the factory next door.
The dumpster clanged as Christine jumped down onto it and beckoned Ilsa to follow. There might be reasons for the blood staining her ill-fitting shirt, true, but Christine would still need to rinse it off, and their clothes were now a liability. The schoolgirls’ uniforms would be very conspicuous once word of the fight in the shelter got out, and besides, school was in session. Truancy was an act of violence against the community, seen as withholding one’s abilities from the public resource cache. Repercussions against those who were tardy or who skipped their duties could vary from a nasty beating to marking their crime on their forearms for repeat or serious offenders—to make sure everyone else knew who they were dealing with.
Christine knew that with an Engineers’ blood on her hands, she’d be in for it. That was Three for her, for sure. More likely, she would be immediately taken, due to the severity of her transgressions. No reason to play it safe; best-case scenario, she’d have to hide out for months to work through all of the changes needed to disguise herself. She thought of the other grey-market acquirers she knew and wondered which of them liked her enough to shelter her.
She cursed the woman running alongside her and herself for getting drawn into this in the first place. It was too late now—she could only hope that she could make her downfall have as great an impact as possible by seeing Ilsa through this. Tearing her mind from the future, she looked at for exits. No time to worry and fuss. She just had to keep moving.
A series of strategic handholds in the roughened bricks of the tenement hall led them through to a third floor corridor with overlooks to the next few floors above it.
Christine dodged into an alley. Ilsa ran past a few steps before following her. Christine pushed aside a moldering door, the locking mechanism long since broken. She wiped the blood off her hands onto a clean area of her tunic and jerked her remaining clothes out of the crate by her pallet.
“Here. Put this on.” She tossed a set of clothes to Ilsa, praying they’d fit. Ilsa’s belly hadn’t filled out much yet, but compared to Christine’s spindly arms and stunted height, there could be issues. Christine had picked her finest outfit for Ilsa, mostly due to its loose fit and the ties at the back. She had only ever worn it for Cycling rites. The cloth had once been dyed some shade of red, and had a finer texture than her work clothes. Of course, it hadn’t been new when Christine bought it, and likely hadn’t been new for the woman she bought it from either. The color had faded, not quite evenly, into a graying rose.
Christine glanced at Ilsa, midway into the dress. No time to look her over. She groped under her pallet for a few other tools she had stashed away; lockpicks, two slim stiletto knives, and the thin holsters that would hold them under her pants. She attached the band to her thighs and made sure the weapons were all securely held against her flesh.
Christine hurried into her own change of clothes, a set of loose breeches and a thin shirt. She tied the drawstring and adjusted the lay of the fabric to make sure the blades weren’t visible. Stuffing her hard-earned meal chits in a hidden pocket sewn into the thigh of her breeches, she shoved the rest of her clothes into a flimsy fabric pack and slung that on her shoulder.
Ilsa had managed to get into the dress, and Christine was relieved that the fit was still loose enough to mostly disguise her belly. Christine removed Ilsa’s hair from its braids. If Ilsa looked suitably Middle Level, she had a better chance of moving around safely beyond Christine's floor, and the Middle and Upper Levels tended to use loose hair as a sign of status. It showed they didn’t have to worry about their hair being a risk while they worked with machinery.
Christine muttered directions to Ilsa as she worked. “Don’t walk too fast, don’t avoid peoples’ eyes, and remember—if
anyone asks where you should be, the factory on this Level is a few buildings away from the shelter. If you backtrack a bit, you can lose them and then keep moving. They won’t expect to find you on another Block, so aim for the bridge to the west.” Some part of Christine hoped that she might conclude her lesson with, “And now, I’ve helped you more than I should’ve, so don’t look for more.”
She knew, logically, that the frightened woman had already signed her up for Service, and that even ditching her now wouldn’t keep Christine in the Engineers’ good graces.
She guided Ilsa through the side door to the tenement, as though they were leaving for their shift, and no one on the street looked twice. They still heard muttered curses at the interruption the HVAC alarm had caused, but the Level was quiet enough that no one looked for them. The Engineers were still combing over the shelter, removing their casualties and keeping the curious away.
No one acknowledged them—in a slum like this, you kept to yourself, unless you were looking for trouble. A few beggar amputees attempted to catch Ilsa’s skirt, but Christine positioned herself subtly between them, and they continued on.
Ilsa’s eyes were sad, seeing the rundown buildings, the pervasive grit and rubble from half-broken seals and half-broken people. She slowed as her gaze lingered on wounds, amputations, and squalor, making Christine tug her along. No doubt people like her were told how lucky she was, how dangerously the lower classes lived. But that wouldn't actually include this squalor, or the people's starvation-sunken cheeks. Christine wanted to smack Ilsa's hands away from her belly, since 'pregnant' was far too noticeable, but Ilsa couldn’t help stroking it absently and stopping her would only attract more attention. Christine edged closer. “Relax, and take your hand off your stomach. You look suspicious.”
Ilsa sighed. “Will my child have to grow up with this? Will we child live long enough to starve like these people?” She stared at her feet and Christine kept her moving. She had no answers.
Christine realized that putting her in the nicer dress might have been a mistake, because it made Ilsa’s innocence all the more obvious. But they were past the worst of the crowds, and almost free. A group of scavengers pressed towards the bridge, arms full of sacks of clinking metal, and Christine nudged Ilsa into line behind them.
Two Engineers were positioned at the entry to the bridge. “What business do you have?” one called to the man at the front of the little caravan.
“Dock in Block West is fucked; had to park here. You want their Pocas to know you detained us and prevented this salvage from getting there?”
The Engineer looked at his companion, spat to the side. They both backed up a few steps to let the scavengers through, with Ilsa and Christine in tow. Christine shivered; this was her first time on the bridge, and it was hard to get over the sense of space after spending a lifetime in cramped tenements and factories. The closest areas to this kind of openness were the stairwells between levels and the windows at the perimeter. For a moment, she felt queasy, seeing open air on both sides of her beyond the glass. Aside from the floor she walked on, there was no ground visible below them: just more air, clouds, and birds flying under them.
A queasy greyish colour and patchy green swirls peeked through the fog. She could see things moving below, and a stronger jolt of nausea surged through her. There was too much space, nowhere to hide. And still, the wonder of those soft, soft clouds made her want to reach through the window and touch them. She’d never seen anything as soft and new-looking as those clouds.
She realized they had fallen behind, and could no longer pass for part of the caravan now conversing with the guards at the other end of the bridge. Ilsa hesitated upon noticing them, and Christine pulled her forward. Residents generally didn’t move between Blocks unless their work demanded it, in part because the Upper Levels of each block tended to be full of paranoia about the possibility of resource theft. Every resident’s needs were supposed to be met, first and foremost, by their own Block. Ilsa flushed uncertainly. Glancing at her, Christine worried that there was no way they wouldn’t be recognized.
“Pardon me,” said Christine, turning to the attendant. “Would you mind if we went in to get my mistress’s daughter?”
The Engineer eyed Ilsa’s worn but formal gown and straight bearing and the cloud of kinky hair falling around her shoulders, and flipped through her resident list. “What’s the name?”
“Ah…” Christine stammered. “I’m sorry, it’s my first day. I think it’s Kath...or Kar…”
“Karleen?” The attendant stifled a yawn.
“Yes! I’m so sorry.”
“Go right ahead.” The woman swatted a hand through the air. “Second building on the right.”
“Thank you,” said Christine. She made sure the woman could hear her as she muttered, “I’m going to be in so much trouble.”
Hide in plain sight, her father had said. If you acted like you were worried about something else, they wouldn’t see what was right in front of them.
Five
Off the bridge, there was little difference between this Block and the one they’d left. It was in the same disrepair, with the same guarded expressions on the inhabitants’ faces. Christine guided Ilsa to a market square to trade as many of their meal chits for supplies as they could without attracting more attention. It would make sense to stay off the street as much as they could. She opted for bars made of dried beetles, since they’d keep for longer. To savor their potentially last warm meal for a while, she got them a couple of plates of roasted rat.
Christine bit into the rat and closed her eyes. Sure, it was a poor man’s rabbit, but this was good rat. As a last meal, it was more than adequate. The garlicky sauce it had been cooked in burned her tastebuds.
As they licked the rest of the juice off their fingers, Christine wondered where they should go next. They might get a temporary safehouse from a black-market fence she knew in the district, but she had no doubt he’d point the guards right there if he heard why they needed it. Best bet would be to find an abandoned building to hide in, but she didn’t know this Block well enough to know which areas were abandoned and why. It wouldn’t do them any good to be hidden if the building wasn’t connected to the purification system for the rest of the Block. Once in a while that happened when a section had to be closed off until new materials for repairs could be located. Then there would be nothing except to wait for someone to find their corpses.
There were fewer Engineers, at least. Most of them were probably combing through the chaos across the bridge. Christine could feel almost normal. Her heartbeat slowing, she decided it was time to chance some conversation.
“So what’d you borrow?” Christine asked, making sure her tone was bouncy, friendly, so it wouldn’t be paid any mind as they wove through people she didn’t know.
“You lent me this dress,” Ilsa said. She smoothed it down, admiring its feel beneath her fingertips, finally seeming to understand when her hands came to rest on her own belly. She lingered a moment more on the fabric, softer than the school uniform. “Nothing from them, I swear.” Christine felt a moment of amusement at what a terrible liar Ilsa was. “It’s the long kind of story—”
“Usually best told over a healthy supply of drinks with an equally healthy supply of time.”
“Usually, though, you know, not with a baby. The drinks part, anyway.”
Christine drew a breath to say they had all the time in the world, but out of the corner of her eye, she noticed an Engineer running towards another. She turned towards Ilsa and tugged a few strands of hair from her forehead as she watched them over the other woman’s shoulder. The Engineer was out of breath, which slowed down his message, but she definitely caught him pantomiming the number two, and then the curves of a woman. And then he caught sight of her, of both of them, and pointed excitedly.
“Fragsticks,” Christine said. “Through there.” She pushed Ilsa through a door that still had an ancient ‘Fire Exit’ sign hanging off it. In
side, the stairway down was blocked.
Christine swore. They were cornered. The door wouldn’t hold the Engineers long; it was already half-rotted. She ran towards the window, and checked for a latching mechanism. If they could get the window open, she thought they might have a chance. Thankfully, maintenance hatches were placed along every several windows for ease of maintenance. She’d gotten lucky and led them into a room with one. It obviously hadn’t been used in quite some time, and the latch stuck. She threw her shoulder into it and nearly fell out when it came open.
“What are you doing?” Ilsa demanded, a note of panic creeping into her voice.
“Just trust me! Come on. Come step out, and grab on.” She pulled Ilsa towards the window, but Ilsa resisted. “Look, aim for that, and grab the fuck on.” Ilsa gave her a frightened look, but edged closer to see what she was pointing at. A baton plunged through the door, sending pieces of presswood flying. Christine swore, said a prayer, and shoved.
Ilsa’s shriek cut her through to the bone, but it broke off abruptly, and she hoped that meant the best. She glanced out to confirm it as the first Engineer pushed his shoulder through the door. “Halt—” he yelled. She turned back, blew him a kiss, and leapt.
Six
Air rushed past Christine, and she spread her arms wide to catch the joist she knew was there. It hit her with a painful thunk, and she wrapped her limbs around it. She opened her eyes, and saw Ilsa clinging to the joist just a little closer to the building, two floors down from the one they’d left so gracelessly. “Crawl towards the wall,” she called to Ilsa, knowing the wind would carry most of her voice away. Within seconds, the other woman was standing on a pipe that ran along the side of the Block and ducking through a broken window on the other side. Christine hurried to follow and stuck her head out one last time. Several Engineers leaned their heads out the window in confusion, looking to see where the girls had fallen.