Lucky 7

by Rae D. Magdon

I look over the edge too. All that’s left of the mechs is a pile of twisted metal and smoldering wires, but the sharp bark of gunfire from inside the elevator reminds me we still aren’t safe. Its steel doors buckle, threatening to collapse.

  “Hija de la chingada,” Elena groans, groping for her pistol with an uncoordinated hand. “Guns must’ve cooled off.” I remember what she said about the mech miniguns, how they can only fire in short bursts before overheating. It looks like our time is up.

  “Over the edge,” I order. “We need to head for the exit.”

  Cherry goes first, clipping her belt cable to the edge and sliding to the ground. Rock goes next. He doesn’t even bother with his cable, just sets Doc on his shoulders and steps out into the air. His huge legs absorb the impact, and he straightens almost immediately, leaving a pair of boot-shaped craters in the cement. The elevator rattles, belching more smoke. I look at Elena. Her bronze complexion has gone yellow, and she looks like she might throw up. Damn it. Not only is she disoriented, I forgot her fear of heights.

  “Come on, Nevares.” I clip my belt cable to the platform and wrap my arm around Elena’s waist, pulling her against my side. She summons the strength to wrap her arms around my neck, and I leap over the edge. Pain shoots up my shins and stabs through my knees as I hit the concrete, but it’s a relatively safe landing.

  Rock, Doc, and Cherry set off for the exit as soon as Elena and I find our footing. We sprint alongside the conveyer belts without looking back, knowing we don’t have much of a head start. When we reach the door leading back to the reception area, my heart sinks. Reinforced steel plating has descended in its place.

  “Fucking bitch,” Cherry spits, slamming her fist into the door. “Catira put this place on lockdown. Wait, forget that. She doesn’t get a nickname anymore.”

  “Red thing,” Elena says, poking Cherry’s arm.

  Cherry looks at her in confusion. “Huh?”

  “The…red thing!” Elena gestures at the door like she’s waving a magic wand, complete with hissing sound effects.

  “Plasma cutter, genius,” Doc says.

  Cherry huffs in frustration. “Gave it to Rami. Where are they, anyway?”

  A voice comes in over the comm. “Waiting to make a dramatic entrance.”

  Cherry brightens immediately. “Babe!”

  “Megan sealed the doors, but she couldn’t do anything about the ceiling. All these huge machines have to vent heat somewhere.”

  I look up. The destroyed office has to be four meters up, and the ceiling’s even higher. Rami must have made use of their grappling hook again. “Where are you?”

  “Better not say, just in case someone is eavesdropping.”

  “Don’t jack in,” I warn them.

  “Don’t need to. I can handle this in meatspace. Aaand…voila.”

  The steel plating over the exit retracts into the ceiling with a loud whine. Just in time, too. Another wave is making its way over from the storage racks.

  “Run,” Rami says. “I’ll meet you at the Eagle.”

  They don’t have to tell us twice. I help Elena stay upright as we run down the short hallway and into the reception area. Fortunately, it’s empty. When we try the door to the hangar, it’s already unlocked. I say a silent thank-you to Rami. It looks like Megan underestimated us. Shit, I realize. She really did it. She actually faked her own death and then tried to kill us. I knew she didn’t care, but this…

  There isn’t time for me to deal with my feelings. We have to get out of here. I gesture my crew into the hangar, waiting until they’re all through the door before jogging in myself. The Eagle is parked where we left it, not far from the entrance. We all pile in, Doc into the copilot’s seat, then me and Elena in back, with Cherry and Rock bringing up the rear. While I help Elena with her safety harness, Doc starts up the engine.

  “One more issue,” she says. “The access code Cross gave us isn’t working anymore. The hangar’s on lockdown too.”

  “Not a problem,” Rami calls, sounding out of breath. I look out the open side door to see them running across the hangar toward us. Once they arrive at the Eagle, they hop into the pilot’s chair.

  Cherry leans past the headrest of Rami’s seat to kiss their head. “You gonna bust us out of here too?”

  “Actually,” Rami says, “I was thinking you could.”

  Cherry looks at me like a puppy begging for a treat. “Pleeease? I only got to blow up a few of them.”

  I roll my eyes, but nod.

  Cherry hops up from her seat and leans out the side of the shuttle, rolling several cherry bombs toward the hangar’s large steel door. “Bombs away! Babe, step on it.” Cherry and I yank the shuttle doors shut as the Eagle lurches in reverse, zooming to the other side of the hangar to avoid the worst of the blast.

  I close my eyes.

  The shuttle bay explodes. My ears fill with the diluted sound of cracking concrete underneath screeching metal. The air smells like fire and dust, and the view through the windshield is blurry as Rami sends the Eagle soaring through the brand-new hole in the hangar door and out into the rain.

  At first, no one says anything. Then, all the adrenaline in the shuttle turns into relieved laughter. Everyone joins in except Elena, who’s still somewhat out of it. I’m so grateful we didn’t lose anyone that I forget my anger and terror and laugh until my stomach hurts.

  When we manage to calm down, I remember Val. Instinctively, I check my belt, but the databox is still there. I take it out and pass it up to Rami. “Here, plug her in.”

  I feel a wave of relief when Val’s voice comes through the speakers. “According to the Eagle’s sensors, everyone is accounted for, and no one has sustained any serious injuries. I am grateful none of you were hurt.”

  “Yeah, same,” Cherry says. “So, can we talk about whatever the fuck just happened?”

  “Okay.” I’m coming down from a serious battle-high, and I feel like I’m about to crash into numb exhaustion. “Megan’s alive and working with AxysGen, presumably because they want Val.”

  “But why?” Doc asks. “Megan hates corps. Can you really see her working for a boss and following rules?”

  “She told us herself,” Rami says. “Veronica Cross has something she needs. Whatever it is, it must be worth an alliance.”

  “We can figure that out later,” I tell them. “First order of business is getting to safety. Megan knows all our hideouts, so we can’t go to any of them. Thoughts?”

  Elena snorts. “Here’s my thought: Your ex is fucking insane.” Her speech has improved significantly, but she still looks like she’s a few seconds away from passing out. “She’s crazy fast, too. It was like fighting the Flash. I would’ve been barbeque without Val boosting my programs.”

  “Elena is correct,” Val says. “Megan is currently using Dendryte Platinum v4.2, AxysGen’s latest prototype hardware, with her own modifications. My core programming prevents me from harming her directly, and while I can boost the processing speed of Elena’s hardware to a certain extent, I could not do so beyond a certain point for fear of alerting Megan to my presence. If she discovered me, she would no doubt attempt to recover me. Likelihood of survival is low in such a scenario.”

  “We might not have a choice.” I glance at Elena. She’s pale and trembling from exhaustion. Without thinking, I put my hand on her thigh. “Doc, can we get a NervPac back here?”

  “Heads up.” Doc tosses it back to me, and I rip the packet open, lifting Elena’s shirt partway to slap the patch against her side.

  “Thanks,” she mumbles, blinking slowly. “Got an idea. Not on how to deal with Creepy Smurf, but to hide. I know some places.”

  “We have plenty of bunkers,” Doc suggests, but I shut her down immediately.

  “All of which Megan knows the location of. Where, Elena?”

  Elena hesitates, then makes up her mind with a sigh. “Mexico City.”

  I sweep back the chunk of brown hair still clinging to her face. “You sur
e?”

  Elena knows what I’m thinking, just like I know what’s on her mind. Mexico is where her connections and safest hideouts are, but so is what’s left of her family. If Megan is right on our tail…well, I’m sure Elena already has the sense to stay as far away from her brothers as possible, just in case.

  “Yeah,” she says. “I’m sure.”

  “Get some sleep. We have a few hours before we get there.”

  “Mmhmm.” On the next blink, Elena’s eyes don’t open. I can see the slow rise and fall of her chest, though, so my panic only lasts a moment.

  “Head for Mexico,” I tell Rami. “We’ll figure the rest out when we get there.”

  Friday, 06-18-65 11:23:52

  THE MIDDLE RINGS OF Mexico City are like a tissue paper collage. Colorful umbrellas blossom between gaps in the skyscrapers, and people move like paint running down a tilted canvas, winding through the cracks and furrows. I’ve never seen so many cogs in one place before. With more and more automation, cogs have been disappearing at a rapid pace, but apparently there are enough of them left to have a community in a city this huge.

  Elena notices me staring out the window. She snorts and shakes her head. “Can you believe I thought this was the wealthy district when I was a kid?”

  I keep gazing down at the umbrellas. Even though I hadn’t grown up a street kid, I remember what it was like living in the outer circles of Moscow after my escape from AukPrep. “Actually, yeah.”

  “Blew my mind the first time I saw a corp estate. I thought there must be a whole town living inside. Didn’t think anyone could even use a mansion that fucking big.”

  “I’ll never have a mansion,” I say without thinking. “Just a house. Maybe on the ocean.”

  Elena raises a brow at me. “Maybe?”

  I swallow uncomfortably. Sometimes I forget she’s seen snatches of my mixed-up memories. That means she probably knows about Barbados, about my stupid pipe dreams. Thinking about it now makes me feel like an idiot.

  “We’re getting close,” Rami says from the pilot’s seat.

  I’m grateful for the interruption. “How close?”

  “Estimated time of arrival ten minutes and six seconds,” Val says.

  “Thank fuck,” Doc grumbles. “You have no idea how bad I need to pee.”

  Elena glances out the window again. “Pick an alley. Any alley.”

  I look outside too. The colorful middle ring has ended, and the city beyond is a mix of brown and grey. The buildings are small—shacks, mostly, and anything bigger is crumbling from the inside out. Instead of umbrellas, the gaps are filled with tents and garbage heaps and laundry drying on wires. There’s hardly any air traffic, and although there are people below, few seem to be going anywhere. The small figures I can see from above are slumped in what little shade there is. We don’t go too far into the outer ring, but we’re high enough to see that it gets worse further on.

  “What a lovely shithole,” Cherry says.

  Elena cracks a tired grin. “Right?”

  Rami banks left, circling back to a blocky grey building that doesn’t completely look like an unstable shell. It’s dingy, but the walls don’t seem in danger of collapsing.

  “Around back,” Elena says. “Hidden garage. Your bird’ll get stripped if we leave it out.”

  “We have a security system,” Rami says.

  “You think the people here care?”

  We touch down in a cramped space behind the building. As Elena said, there’s a tiny entrance leading into the first floor. Once the Eagle stops, she unfastens her harness and hops out the side to let us in.

  The inside of the garage is barely big enough to hold a single shuttle. There’s grey wall everywhere and it smells like it looks, old and dirty and depressing. The only exit is a door facing the Eagle’s nose. I meet Elena there.

  “You sure Jento will fix us up?”

  “He’s a fixer, isn’t he? He’ll do whatever we want for the right price.” Elena goes through the door, and I follow her.

  The room beyond is medium sized and dimly lit. It smells like cigar smoke and stale sweat, and six people are sitting around a table, surrounded by a cloud of both. As they turn toward me, I recognize one of them. His lean face looks like a white knife in the dark and his pinched lips conceal yellowing teeth. Most of my communication with him has been via the extranet, but I still recognize him.

  “Jento.”

  Jento looks at me in surprise, but recovers quickly. “So, the Wolf of the Kremlin decides to pay us an in-person visit. Without calling.” His eyes flick behind me, to where the rest of the crew has filed in to stand at my shoulders. “And she brought her pack along.”

  Elena rolls her eyes. “Shut the fuck up, would you? We just need a place to crash, so you can stop with the dramatics.”

  As Jento studies Elena with unsettling shrewdness, I feel the strange impulse to step closer to her and block his view. Then his mouth curls up into a thin smile as his gaze flicks to Rock. “People don’t bring grunts like that just to crash.”

  “Him?” Elena snorts. “He’s a bunny rabbit. Unless you decide to be a jerkwad about finding us a safehouse.”

  “That depends on who you’re hiding from.”

  “None of your fucking business,” Elena says, which earns a snort of amusement from Cherry.

  “AxysGen’s people,” I tell Jento. “We shook them off in Malaysia. Just want to be sure it sticks.”

  Jento doesn’t buy it. “So you came all the way to Mexico?”

  “Maybe I was homesick,” Elena says.

  “Now that’s definitely a lie,” Jento says. “I know you, girl. You do everything you can to stay off this entire continent if you can help it.”

  Elena’s face twitches in fury, so I put a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll pay,” I tell Jento, knowing those are the words he’s waiting for.

  His brown eyes light up with interest. “How much?”

  “Thirty.”

  “Thirty-five.”

  “Thirty.”

  “Fine. You can stay the night while I find you a more permanent place to crash.”

  I nod.

  “Fine. But if AxysGen storms in looking for you, I won’t—”

  A door on the far side of the room opens, revealing a short, slightly gangly boy, wearing clothes much too big for him. He’s got brown skin, dark eyes, and a tousled puff of black hair on top of his head that looks like it hasn’t been brushed in a while. “Hey Jento, I—” He freezes when he sees us, although his eyes are fixed on one person in particular. “Uh-oh.”

  “Yeah, uh-oh.” Elena stalks toward him much faster than her short legs would suggest. She grips both his shoulders and shakes him, glaring at him furiously. “What the fuck are you doing here?” she shouts in rapid Spanish, so fast I have trouble keeping up. “Jacobo, you fucking idiot! What did I tell you about hanging around with Jento, huh? If you need credits, you come to me, okay? The only place I want to see your scrawny ass is at home in a chair, studying for your APS.”

  Jacobo looks startled at first, but then he narrows his eyes and juts his chin out in defiance. “And be a corp puppet? No fucking way.”

  “You’ll be fucking Pinocchio if I tell you to, shit for brains. You know what happens to people who don’t play straight? They die. I risk my ass every day so you don’t fucking have to!”

  “You haven’t died yet,” Jacobo protests. His dark eyes look almost exactly like Elena’s when she’s angry. “I’m good, okay? I know what I’m doing.”

  “You’re twelve! No twelve-year-old knows what the hell they’re doing!”

  “Hey!” Doc says from behind us, but I shush her with a look. She definitely doesn’t need to get involved in this.

  “And you,” Elena growls, whirling on Jento like a lioness defending her cub. “How fucking dare you drag my baby brother into your filth? You useless piece of dogshit!”

  Jento remains calm, although his companions seem restless. I notice one brawny
woman with an eyepatch reach for the pistol at her belt, and I move my hand closer to my rifle. I don’t want a fight to break out, but if it does…well, I didn’t survive AxysGen and Megan just to die in a trash heap like this.

  “The kid’s not wrong,” Jento says to Elena. He removes his cigar from the ash tray and takes a puff. “He’s good. I got him his first jack. Dendryte Bronze. He’s almost paid it off already.”

  “What?” Elena rounds on Jacobo again and yanks his hair back to stare behind his ear. “God-fucking-damnit, Jacobo! Jacking isn’t a game, okay? One hit from a Puls.wav and it’s over. No new lives, no resets. Your brain leaks out through your ears! I dodged about twenty from some crazy gringa yesterday, and the only reason I survived is because I had help! You think I want that life for you? You can be better. You deserve better!”

  “It’s not like I had a choice!” Jacobo shouts, his eyes welling with tears. “You left, Elena. Someone had to take care of Abuelita and Mateo.”

  “Yeah, dumbass, and that someone is me.”

  Jacobo glares at her, but suddenly all the fight drains out of him. He throws his arms around Elena’s waist, and she ducks her head to rest her chin against his hair.

  “Hey, hermanito. It’s okay. I’m here.”

  The room gets uncomfortably quiet, so I step in. “How much does the kid owe you, Jento?”

  Greed gleams in Jento’s eyes. “Well, the new jack didn’t come cheap.”

  “I’ll throw in another fifteen if you forget this kid’s name.”

  “Twenty.”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Fine.” He gives Elena a sour look. “You can stay here tonight, but don’t expect room service. I’ll set you up in a safe house tomorrow.”

  “Fine.” I glance at the rest of my crew. They’re all in various stages of wary surprise, though Doc is sulking more than usual. “Come on.” I nod at the door Jacobo came through. “We’re done here.”

  They file out of the room, Cherry and Rami first, then Doc, and finally Rock, who gives Jento one more threatening look. I hesitate, then step toward Elena and tap her shoulder. “We should go,” I whisper, nodding toward the door.