The Good for Nothings

by Danielle Banas

  A crackle of static shot through the screen, and Elio’s voice and image cut out for a second before reappearing.

  “—oor?” was all I heard him say.

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘Can you get the next door?’ It looks the same as the last one.”

  He was deep in the crypt now—or at least that was how it looked. White walls streaked with something black that I really hoped was just dirt bracketed a wide archway. No signs of royal dead people, but maybe they would be in the next room.

  I unlocked the door with a few quick keystrokes, and Elio headed inside.

  The video feed from his comm flickered again. A spark shot out the top of my own comm as the screen went black.

  “Elio?”

  I could still hear his voice, far off, like he was shouting across a valley. “I found them. They’re encased in glass. They look like they’re sleeping.” He beeped. “Cora … they still look alive. They’re not alive, right?”

  “Formaldehyde,” I said, distracted by the black screen on my comm. Was my connection bad, or was his? More importantly, why did it seem like everything I touched lately was malfunctioning at the worst moments?

  “Formaldehyde,” Elio repeated. “Right. Sorry, I’m nervous. It’s creepy down here. Can I come back now?”

  “You can as long as you don’t come back empty-handed.”

  “No worries there. This place is full of gold. I think I can open the glass and get one of those bones you wanted too.”

  “Excellent. Just make sure you…” My words died as quickly as the comm link in my hands. As quickly as the monitors on my control panel, which blinked out one … by one … by one …

  An icy feeling crept over my shoulders, one I was positive had nothing to do with the unfortunate weather patterns on this awful planet.

  “Elio?” I gripped my comm tight enough to break it. The power button was still lit. Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe everything on his end was fine. “Are you still there?”

  “Cora?”

  I sighed in relief. “Yeah. Hurry up. I want to get home before someone spots us.” I stopped any nerves from leaking into my voice. I didn’t want to scare him even more.

  But he didn’t hear me. “Cora? Cora, are you there?”

  “I’m here. I—”

  “Something down here doesn’t feel right. I don’t think I’m glitching. It feels like—”

  The line went dead.

  “Elio!” I shook the comm, resisting the urge to throw it at the wall. “Elio!”

  My heart slid into my throat as the power in the pod ship went out with a groan, leaving me in the dark.

  Elio.

  The dark I could handle. Cold I could not, but I didn’t stop to think about it. I pulled down on the emergency release to open the hatch, and then I was racing through the snow, up the hill to the cemetery, my hat blowing off in the harsh winds. Damn my surveillance to the edges of the universe, I shouldn’t have let Elio go in there alone.

  The crypt had even more stairs than he said, and I stumbled down them in the pitch black, cursing myself for not bringing a flashlight as I shouted Elio’s name. When there was no response, I had to pinch myself so I wouldn’t panic. Were there guards down here? Something I had so easily overlooked? Evelina was right: I wasn’t ready to lead a job like this.

  I hit the bottom of the stairs, almost slipping in a puddle. The arch that I’d seen on Elio’s comm loomed in shadows cast by a soft light in the room beyond, which glowed inside the glass prism containing the Vaotin queen. The lid of her tomb was pushed open a crack where Elio had attempted to get inside.

  I found him collapsed on the dais beneath the tomb.

  “Elio!” This didn’t appear to be a glitch. He wasn’t rigid, frozen in time. He was limp, as if he’d just had enough for the day and powered down. It was exactly what I always imagined would happen if his memory core really did die.

  “You’re okay. I’ll fix you.” I refused to let myself panic as I hauled him up. Shifting him underneath my arm, I reached out to the tomb to brace myself.

  My fingers dipped through the crack Elio had made, hooking around the ice-cold arm of the dead queen inside.

  It happened all at once.

  The door to the room slammed, shaking the walls, rattling the heaps of gold and jewels piled in the corners. There was no handle that I could see from the inside. No way out. The temperature plunged well below freezing, so cold that the breath stopped in my lungs.

  Water began snaking out of cracks near the ceiling. The air should have been cold enough to freeze it instantly, but it barreled onward, gushing hard enough to cover the floor and creep up the steps to the dais in a matter of seconds.

  I took a step back, bumping into the queen’s tomb and consequently sending another wave down the walls and across the floor. Elio’s body sagged against me. I couldn’t keep a hold on him. I couldn’t even keep a hold on myself.

  My mind went silent as the water climbed higher. Soul-crushing, world-darkening silence. For all that Cruz and Evelina had taught me—how to pick a pocket, how to build a bomb that would destroy half a city—they never thought it was pertinent to teach me how to swim.

  I was going to die.

  Today. Here. Now.

  I pulled Elio closer as the water hit the edge of the dais, washing over the toes of my boots. Only then did I feel the lump against his side—the shape of a blaster and a pocket full of some of my most powerful explosives.

  Either I could risk the crypt collapsing on top of us, or I could drown in this room. An explosion, at least, seemed like the quicker way to go.

  The water rose—faster, faster, faster. It covered my ankles, surpassed my knees, my thighs, my hips. A sweet-smelling mist filled the room, similar to Blair’s moon dust but far stronger. My skin rippled with tingles, my limbs so weak I could hardly stand. Pulling the trigger on the blaster seemed impossible. A grenade it would be, then.

  My vision went black around the edges as I pawed around in Elio’s jacket. Just as the water reached my chest, I ripped out the pin of a fat yellow explosive with my teeth and lobbed it at the door.

  Before I could hear the bang, my mind darkened completely, and the water rushed over us both.

  4

  “Do you think she’s dead? I’m putting my money on dead. Not that I have any money on me at the moment…”

  Something sharp dug into my side. I tried opening my eyes, but they refused to budge. Somewhere nearby, the voice continued, a high-pitched drone that sounded as if it were drilling a hole into my brain. If I could remember how to operate my arms, then I would have rolled over and punched whatever dared to interrupt my sleep. But I just lay there—wherever there was—immobile and cranky, my mouth filled with a sour tang as if I’d licked the inside of a trash can.

  “The little one is pretty shiny. If he doesn’t wake up, we could harvest some of his parts.” The voice laughed, and there was a slapping sound followed by a growl. “Come on, you lump! Help me move them in from the door. Chivalry isn’t dead yet. I should—oh! You’re awake!”

  “Cora?” Elio’s cold, tiny fingers prodded my cheeks, and my eyes flew open. My muscles were cramped, my body pulsing with sudden terror and the overwhelming desire to both vomit and urinate. Four cinder block walls surrounded us, dripping something that was hopefully water.

  “What the—” I stopped abruptly, my throat burning. How much water did I inhale in the crypt? Were we still on Vaotis? Memories of our failed job came rushing back, but they were eclipsed by the sight of Elio sitting on the floor beside me. His ears hung limply around his face, and more holes on his neck had cropped up, exposing half a dozen new patches of wires, but he was alive. Somehow we both were.

  “Oh, goody. New friends,” said the same high voice from before. It belonged to a girl about my age, Earthan maybe, although it was tough to tell in the dim light. She had short purple hair buzzed nearly to her scalp, and the cheery grin she gave us practically made he
r dark skin glow.

  I didn’t trust her. Anyone who looked that happy was either a liar or lacking sanity. If she attacked, I knew a quick shot with Elio’s blaster would put her down. I reached for it in his jacket, the fabric caked with grime from the queen’s crypt, but found his pockets disappointingly empty.

  “Oh, they kept your stuff,” the girl said. “They always do. You had a couple coins in your pocket, but I took those. Finders keepers. I also took the zipper on your sweater. It looks like it’s made of Europium. Is it? I’ve been itching to touch some for years but never managed it and—”

  “Whoa! Can you shut up for a second?” In addition to all the other aches in my body, now my head was pounding. And look at that—my zipper really was missing.

  A sudden noise came from the opposite corner of the room, almost like a laugh, but I couldn’t see far enough into the shadows to pick out a body. Maybe I made it up, desperate to talk to anyone other than the girl, who had scooted closer and was talking again.

  “My mom calls me Magpie. I’m always swiping things for myself, but it’s actually a very misleading name, because according to research, magpies are positively terrified of shiny objects. And I very much like them. Shiny objects, that is.” She ran a hand over her scalp before offering to shake. “I’m Wren, by the way. Also known as your welcoming committee.”

  I just stared at her. The aura around her head shimmered a soft periwinkle blue. Far too calm for being stuck in this freezing, windowless room. She was most definitely out of her mind.

  Of the two of us, Elio was the only one who tried to be polite. He pinched Wren’s hand between two of his fingers in a halfhearted shake. “I’m Elio. This is Cora.”

  “Nice to meet you. What are you in for?”

  Elio frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  Wren grinned. Again. “Grand theft auto? Homicide? No, not homicide. You don’t seem like a murderer. She does though.” She nodded to me, and I swore I heard another chuckle from the shadows.

  Still not seeing anything, I pulled my eyes away from the corner. “We didn’t do anything,” I said. “Where are we?”

  Finally, finally Wren’s grin faded. “They didn’t tell you when they brought you in?”

  “We weren’t conscious when they brought us in,” Elio said, but my ears were ringing. At last everything clicked into place.

  If we ever got out of here, Evelina would kill us both: we’d broken a criminal’s only rule.

  We got caught.

  Wren had the grace to look apologetic as she nodded to the door—a block of steel with no handle and no window. Just a faceless slab of metal.

  “You’re on Andilly. In the Ironside maximum security prison.”

  * * *

  Andilly, despite its warm and fuzzy-sounding name, was the planet where all good parents threatened to send their children if they misbehaved. A primitive nation made of sprawling, provincial villages that were constantly locked in some kind of war with each other, Andilly’s inhabitants were known to be so violent that not even Evelina wanted to steal from them.

  And if their personalities weren’t dazzling enough, they also had prison cells that smelled like curdled milk and feet.

  We were trapped here.

  I should have realized it immediately, but it had taken a while for my brain to play catch-up. Wren’s baggy red jumpsuit, the dark and dank cinder block walls, the general sense of despair and anger in the air—we had been caught, manhandled onto a ten-hour flight from Vaotis to Andilly, and thrown into the largest penitentiary in the galaxy. And I didn’t remember any of it.

  The not knowing was what made my skin crawl. Someone must have seen my pod ship land at the cemetery. When I unlocked the door of the crypt for Elio, no alarm had gone off—at least not one my monitors had picked up. It must have happened when he opened the queen’s tomb, when that strange vapor had filled the room, seeping into his processing system and my lungs, and knocked us both out.

  We’re probably cursed now. Doomed to listen to Wren’s incessant talking as punishment for our many crimes. For being locked in a cell, the girl sure didn’t seem too sad about it.

  The worst part of it all, I realized with a twist in my gut, was that our blasters, my inventions, all my hard work, had been left behind in the pod ship. I’d have to build another visual enhancement device from scratch, assuming I ever managed to find the parts again. Or assuming we ever got out of here. No. We will. I would live to hear Evelina yell at me again, I would live to hear Nana Rae sing the Condor national anthem off-key, I would live to see Blair’s ugly, annoying face. I would not die in this cell.

  I looked to my left, where Elio was pretending to politely listen to Wren describe the customs associated with birthdays on Earth. They involved yelling “surprise” at each other in a dark room and then lighting things on fire, and to Elio’s credit, he didn’t look as frightened by that as I expected him to.

  We’ll escape, I silently promised Elio as he gave Wren a nervous smile. Because if he continued glitching, I would be useless to him trapped in here. I hadn’t committed years of crimes to get locked up now.

  “Hey, Wren?” I interrupted her explanation of Earthan slang and didn’t feel the least bit sorry about it. “We’ll get a trial, right? They can’t keep us here without a trial.”

  She started playing with my stolen zipper. “I doubt that’s on anybody’s mind right now. The prison is pretty packed at the moment. That’s why we’re sharing cells. I’ve been in here for weeks and no one’s come to talk to me.” She stuffed the zipper under a threadbare blanket. “By the way, what are you being charged with? You never said.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Murder.”

  “Unlikely. I’m pretty sure you have a conscience. You keep looking at your little droid like you’re more worried about him than you are about yourself. So maybe you killed someone, but if you did then it was an accident, because I personally don’t think you have it in you.” She crossed her arms and winked. “That’s right, alien-Cora. I’m more than just a loud mouth and a dazzling personality.”

  I jerked my chin up in an attempt to look threatening. How had she figured all that out without the ability to read auras? “What are you in for, then?”

  “Well, since you asked, I guess I’ll share. It’s a harrowing tale.” She rubbed her palms together. “I may or may not have blown up a space station.”

  Elio beeped. “May or may not?”

  “Okay, I did. But it was an accident.”

  “Did you make the explosives?” I asked, an idea forming. She’d hidden my zipper under her blanket; maybe she had more odds and ends I could use to build a device. If I could collect enough, I could blow the cell door clear across the prison.

  “I—” Wren started, but the hydraulic hiss of the door had her timidly backing up to block her stash of trinkets.

  The door opened fully to reveal a woman in a crisp white guard uniform, her bulky silhouette weighed down beneath blasters on her hips and armor across her shoulders. The only exposed skin on her neck and face was bright red, covered in scales that formed a trail up into her hairline. I’d seen holograms of Andillian people when I was in school. I remembered my teacher anxiously referring to them as “flesh-eating lizards.”

  I sat up as the guard’s tongue darted out, ignoring Elio cowering behind me. “We’re innocent,” I said adamantly.

  Her lips curled back over yellow teeth.

  “I demand to talk to whoever brought us here. I swear, when my mother hears about what happened—”

  “You tell her, Cora,” Elio muttered.

  “—she’ll rip the front door of this place off, and stars help us all, she’ll—”

  The guard flung two red jumpsuits and slip-on sneakers over my head, where they landed in the back of the cell. “B’shkrah,” she mumbled in a guttural, accented voice. I didn’t know much Andillian, but I knew that word. Brat.

  The insult echoed through the cell as the door hissed closed
behind her. The sound of two locks clicking filled the air, followed by her retreating footsteps.

  “Wait! Come back!” I pounded my fist against the door, but all I got was a sharp pain in my hand. “What happened to innocent until proven guilty?”

  “Cora?” Elio whispered.

  “Or our one comm? Don’t we get that?”

  “Um, Cora? Please stop yelling at the door.”

  “Why?”

  Elio’s hand shook as he pointed across the cell to where the jumpsuits had landed. They weren’t on the ground any longer. Instead they were balled up in the lap of something very bulky and very … alive.

  Elio beeped.

  The shape stood, slinking out of the shadows like a ghost.

  I jumped back. This was the thing that had laughed at me, I was sure of it. But then why hadn’t I noticed them? Why hadn’t I seen the spike of an aura around them? I may have been losing my touch as a criminal, but I wasn’t losing my touch at reading people.

  The dim light fell upon our other cellmate. Another citizen from Andilly, bigger and more menacing than the guard. He looked around my age, face hidden underneath a hooked nose and elegant lines of dark tattoos swirling across his forehead. With his red skin and red prison uniform, I couldn’t help thinking that he resembled a giant drop of blood.

  “Oh. Him.” Wren barely looked up from the metal shavings she was sorting into piles on her blanket. “Don’t mind him. He’s been here longer than I have. I’ve found that the more you look at him the more nightmares you have, so I try to ignore him.”

  My stance wavered as he neared me. Several scales along his neck had peeled back, revealing burnt skin and a long rope of scar tissue, like someone had carved into him with a knife.

  I tried bringing my arms up as he got closer but froze under his hateful stare. His dark eyes had an odd, liquid shine to them. Almost like an insect.

  “Does … does he have a name?” Elio squeaked.