The Good for Nothings

by Danielle Banas

  “What is this?” I asked. My eyes watered as smoke curled out of the cups. The bartender’s grumpier head narrowed its eyes, while the more pleasant one gave us a grin full of chipped yellow teeth.

  “Swamp juice!” he declared proudly.

  “Bottoms up!” Wren lifted her cup in a toast. The rest of us followed suit, Elio faking it.

  The swamp juice had the consistency of rocket fuel and tasted like it too. After taking only one small sip, I found myself unable to breathe, hacking up a lung while the alcohol burned a trail down my throat. Elio pounded his fists into my back to try to revive me.

  “What was that?” I croaked. My entire body suddenly felt like it was being held together by rubber bands.

  “You heard him,” Wren said. “Swamp juice.” She took a sip, pinkie up. “You don’t have to drink it, but at least pretend to act a little drunk. People are more susceptible to confessing secrets to the intoxicated, especially when they think they’re too out of it to remember. Act adorably drunk and someone is bound to trust us enough to spill something about the treasure.”

  Anders frowned. “That’s … actually not a horrible idea. Oh stars—I can’t believe I just complimented you. I need another drink.” He gulped down the rest of his swamp juice like a champ and signaled for the bartender.

  When he came over, left head still scowling, right head still grinning, I decided to test Wren’s theory. “Hey there! This is a great drink. Splendid. Best I’ve ever had, in fact.”

  “You’re laying it on too thick,” Elio whispered in my ear.

  “Anywho. We’re just stopping by on our way to Teolia.” I lifted my cup to my lips, pretending to sway a little. “Heard of it?”

  “No,” grunted the left head, unamused.

  “Really? I’ve been told it’s quite the treasure of the universe. I’m surprised you’ve never hunted for it on the map.”

  Right Head let out a girlish giggle. Left Head looked like he wanted to drown me in one of the kegs behind the bar. “I’m charging you double for aggravating me.” He shot me daggers before moving to serve a group at the other end of the tavern.

  Laughing, Wren swiped another tankard and stuffed it in her bag. “I’ll give you an F for effort. And I just realized we’re basically the start of a seriously bad joke. An Earthan, two aliens, and a robot walk into a bar…”

  I rolled my eyes. “Scratch that. Maybe I do need another drink.” I waved at the friendly right head when it spun in our direction.

  F for effort. Yeah, right. I’d show her.

  And that’s how one tiny sip of swamp juice turned into many, many bad decisions. One drink was strong enough; by the time I reached my fourth, my vision was so blurry and I was giggling so hard that Elio had to prop me against Anders’s shoulder to keep me from taking a tumble and cracking my head on the floor.

  The others weren’t doing much better. Wren held her liquor easier than I did, but she still drunkenly challenged a group of Martians to a dance-off, which she won by doing a back flip into a split that ripped her pants.

  Then there was Anders. After drink number three, he discovered he could use his endearing Earthan face to interrogate our fellow bar patrons, because no one found him the least bit intimidating when he looked so wholesome. But still, useful information was tough to come by. We made our way around the tavern, and I laughed and drank and tried not to fall on my face on the sticky floor while Anders dropped subtle comments about Teolia’s keys. A few people mentioned Cadrolla, and one elderly gentleman showed us a long silver scar he received on his pelvis after diving off a cliff on the planet Teolia during a vacation last year. But no one had anything useful to offer when it came to the treasure.

  When the old wooden clock on the wall chimed at the top of the hour, we gave up and returned to the bar, drowning our sorrows in more swamp juice. I’d grown accustomed to its acidic taste. I barely even gagged when I threw back my next shot.

  The room spun, and I laid my head down on my arms. “Let’s just sleep through the rest of our lives, Andy. When we get thrown back in Ironside, that’s all we’ll be doing anyway.”

  “You’re a sad drunk,” Anders observed.

  “No, I’m not.” And yet I wiped at the tears that had gathered in the corners of my eyes. He was being so mean. That’s what he was. A mean drunk. A stupid drunk.

  A burst of something hot and dangerous swelled in my stomach when he leaned his shoulder against mine. Or maybe that hot and dangerous feeling was only the swamp juice gurgling through my intestines. He was even closer than we had been on the ship last night, and even though we’d been drinking all evening, his breath was as sweet as spun sugar. Like one of those orange lollipops he enjoyed so much. Reaching toward me, he twined a silver curl of my hair around his little finger.

  A … cute drunk. Maybe that’s what he was.

  If so, then I was in serious trouble.

  “You know,” I breathed, barely audible over the raucous laughter in the bar. “You’re not the worst person I’ve ever met.”

  His shoulders shook with laughter. “I hope there’s a compliment hidden in there somewhere.”

  “Duh.” In my inebriated state, I steadied myself against him, and my hand just kind of … accidentally happened to fall on top of his. “Anders? Hey, Anders?”

  “Hey, Cora?”

  I studied the bow of his full pink lips, the small cleft in his chin. His onyx stare was so intense, his Earthan face a little too aesthetically pleasing. The real Anders wasn’t that pretty to look at, but he was smart and he was strong. He was kind, at least to me. Those things held more value than the skin he wore.

  Anders’s smile blurred, doubling, then tripling before coming back into focus again.

  “Anders? I think … I think that if you weren’t who you are and I wasn’t who I am, there’s a chance we might have actually been friends.”

  “I’m … not sure what that means.”

  What it meant was that I was far too drunk to be having such a serious conversation. I was straddling a dangerous line between keeping up with this charade and confessing my intentions once and for all.

  Giving my head a little shake, I mentally pulled myself away from the edge of the precipice. Anders didn’t need to know all of this was a farce, a scheme I had cooked up, an elaborate lie.

  He didn’t need to know that whatever minuscule bit of camaraderie we had cultivated was a game I desperately wanted to make real.

  And not just between me and him. Between me and Wren. Between all of us. I had done a fine job of convincing myself that I didn’t need their friendship, but … maybe I did need them. A lot.

  Problem was—I needed to save Elio too.

  It was impossible to get everything fair and square. That was a lesson Evelina had taught me a long time ago.

  But she had also taught me to simply take whatever I wanted. And I wasn’t in the right state of mind to make rational decisions and do otherwise. I was lying to Anders and to myself, but I curled my fingers around the hot skin at the back of his neck anyway and tilted his head down. A pink flash of his aura lit up the bar as he skimmed his hands along my arms. He held my fingers in his own, so gently—as if we weren’t two felons, but just a boy and a girl. As if we weren’t searching for an impossible treasure. As if our lives weren’t at stake.

  Raising my lips to his, I closed my eyes …

  Buzz!

  “What the—?”

  Buzz!

  My comm link, vibrating against the edge of the bar top. Anders and I sprang apart, and I instinctively wiped the back of my hand across my mouth, even though we hadn’t done anything. I wasn’t sober before, but I sure felt sober now.

  I accepted the call, and to my horror the warden’s scarred, red face filled my screen.

  Anders ducked. “Don’t tell him I’m here!”

  “You have a tracking chip in your neck, idiot. He knows exactly where you are.”

  “Oh. Right, sorry. Still a little tispy.”
<
br />   “Tipsy,” I corrected.

  “That too.”

  “Are you quite finished?” asked the warden. He was seated in his office, and the familiar row of shrunken heads filled the wall behind him—although the display looked slightly uneven on the left side, thanks to Wren and her little bout of thievery.

  “Hello there, Sir.” I waved. “Warden. Sir Warden. Is there, uh, is there something we can do for you?”

  He picked up a knife on his desk, spit on the blade, and began wiping it dry. Like father, like son. “Miss Saros, I find myself growing bored.”

  “I suggest a crossword puzzle, then, Sir.”

  His eyes flicked up at the lens, and even though I was just watching him on my screen, I still felt the heat of his fury deep in my bones. “I find your humor revolting. I also thought that you would have more news for me by now.”

  “But—Anders said he commed you last night.”

  “Who?”

  I pointed next to me. “Your son?”

  “I don’t have a son, I have a spawn—”

  “Always a pleasure to see you too,” Anders muttered.

  “—he mentioned that you located one of the keys, which is all well and good, but I expected better. I expected the job to be further along by now.”

  “It hasn’t even been a week!” I protested. “You gave us two. You never said we had to be finished early.”

  “I never asked to be blessed with such striking good looks either, and yet here we are.” He combed the blade of his knife through his tangled black hair.

  “Is he serious?” I whispered to Anders.

  “Andillians don’t make jokes.”

  “Except you.”

  “I’m special.” Reaching over the bar top, he grabbed a bottle at random and poured himself a shot. “And still mildly intoxicated.”

  The warden stabbed his knife into his desk. The hilt swung like a pendulum. “Back to the task at hand. I am bored, Miss Saros. I am afraid you aren’t living up to your family’s reputation.”

  My teeth clenched so hard my jaw popped. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re excused. I must admit, I anticipated something a bit flashier. That is your family’s forte, it seems. Explosions, perhaps? Maybe a nice death-defying escape? Even the outbreak you orchestrated in my prison was more harrowing than what you have demonstrated in this hunt so far.”

  “Did you happen to catch the part where we almost drowned in a cave on Cadrolla? Because I did. I’d call that pretty harrowing, wouldn’t you, Anders?”

  Anders slumped in his bar stool, refusing to speak. I shouldn’t have expected him to. The warden wouldn’t listen to Anders anyway. Just like Evelina barely listened to me.

  The warden fingered his knife, a repulsive look of longing in his eyes. “I require those keys, Miss Saros. It seems like you need more motivation, and I need more entertainment. A good laugh is so hard to come by around here.” He sighed so theatrically that I wished I could reach through the screen and slap him. “Here is what I propose: I’ve assembled a team of my own guards. They fly out of Andilly in, oh, I don’t know, an hour. Maybe two. They’ll know exactly where to find you. If you can manage to secure the remaining two keys and the treasure chest before they can, I’ll honor our agreement and expunge your criminal records. However, if you fail, then I dare say your old cell is getting quite cold with no inhabitants…”

  “We get the picture,” Anders growled.

  “Excellent. You know how much I hate explaining things twice.”

  Anders’s fist clenched. A piece of the bar top broke off with a crack, causing the bartender’s grumpy head to scowl in our direction.

  I held my comm link in a death grip. How was it that this man, who knew next to nothing about me, figured out all the ways to push me over the edge? He wanted me to live up to the Saros reputation? Fine. I would exceed their reputation. He wanted explosions? Mayhem? We could do that. We could do better than that. We could blow the other team’s ship right out of the sky. I wouldn’t even feel sorry.

  “One more thing, Miss Saros, before I disconnect,” said the warden. “I don’t trust that this little competition alone will motivate you. To ensure that you all cooperate, I have one more announcement.”

  “Which is?” Anders said.

  “It loses its fun if I share it with you. I recommend you turn to the nearest net screen. It might inspire you to move a bit … faster. Until we speak again.” He disconnected with a beep.

  “Wait!” I shook my comm, but it was no use. He was gone. “What was he talking about? Is he always so cryptic?”

  But Anders ignored me. He buried his head in his palms while muttering a sharp string of curses, loud enough that I could still hear them over the clinking of the glasses around the tavern. His skin flashed from tan to pale pink to dark red and back to tan, like a net program he couldn’t tune to the correct frequency. He was losing control. Desperate to bring him back to himself, I yanked his hands down and slapped him across the face.

  His eyes flashed with murder. “Do that again and I’ll bite your hand off.”

  “That’s an empty threat and you know it. What’s our game plan here?”

  “Game plan?” He slammed his empty shot glass on the bar. “There is no game plan! He completely—what’s the phrase you use on your sophisticated planet? Screwed the pooch?”

  “I don’t think anyone has ever said that on any planet. Ever. Do you mean ‘screwed us over’?”

  “I don’t care what I mean. We can’t hunt the treasure when someone else is hunting us. He’s making this into a game. I knew he would do something like this.” A hint of black formed at his fingertips, but he pushed his claws away, keeping his disguise intact. “I told you, Cora. I told you not to take this job with him!”

  “Like we had a choice!”

  He didn’t hear me. “This is what he does. He ruins lives. Mine. My mother’s.”

  “Your … mother?”

  He plowed on. “Nothing he does ends well for anyone except himself. He’s watching our every move.” He pressed a finger against the back of his neck. “The second he sees where we’re going, his team will follow. All of his guards are ex-military. They went through the same training I did, and knowing the warden, he’ll send at least half a dozen.”

  I gulped. Anders times six?

  “Make no mistake, if they don’t outright murder us when they get here, they’ll find another way to overpower us. They’ll get to the keys first.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “He told us he had another announcement. Something that will make us move faster—” I turned to the net screen mounted on the wall above the bar when it let out a high-pitched wail of warning. Four more screens hanging around the tavern did the same, their displays rimmed in a ribbon of red, black letters scrolling along the glass and casting shadows on the walls. A single bold word caught my attention: BOUNTY.

  Four photos flashed underneath.

  Our photos.

  The tavern went quiet as the warden’s voice filled the room, explaining how we had escaped Ironside and were last seen in Tunerth. How we were considered armed and extremely dangerous. Nothing I could disagree with, although the photographs on the net screens told a different story. There was an old school photo of me from about five years ago—my hair in messy pigtails, lips smeared with gloss that I’d probably stolen from Evelina’s makeup kit. I looked happy and innocuous, even though I’d already started working for Cruz and Evelina at that time.

  Next to me was Elio. His picture was taken from a security camera inside the Vaotis Grand Treasury. He was cowering behind my legs, mid-beep, eyes glowing. Beside him was Anders, dressed in burgundy military regalia, medals adorning his shoulders. The last photo was Wren’s mugshot from Ironside. In true Wren fashion, she was winking at the camera.

  We looked like the weirdest group of criminals ever.

  And to top it off, the warden was offering a lucky group fifty thousand ritles to bring us back to him.


  “This is not good,” I whispered as the implications sank in. Not only was the warden’s team of guards chasing us, now the entire galaxy—no, probably the entire universe—would be out to get us too.

  I jumped when my comm buzzed against my arm. A message from the warden:

  I’ll retract the bounty when you bring me the keys. Run fast, Miss Saros.

  “Not good at all,” I said again.

  “Psst! You two!”

  Elio was creeping down the hall from the bathrooms, Wren at his back, her hands protectively gripping her carpetbag. “Psst! Hey-ey-ey!” Elio hissed again, slurring his words. “I’m t-trying to b-be inconspicuous by not using your names since we are wanted criminals and instead refer-erring to you in the general sense of ‘you people’ or ‘y’all’ or ‘yinz.’ Which would you per—uh—p-prefer?”

  “Why are you talking like that?” I demanded. “You aren’t drunk.”

  “I’m pretending.” He shrugged. “I like to fit in.”

  “We have a problem,” Wren said. “There’s a crowd gathered outside talking about the Starchaser. I think someone saw us land.”

  “How big of a crowd?” I asked. “Can we get past them and lift off?”

  Anders tapped my shoulder. “I think the better question,” he began warily, “is can we get out of this bar?”

  “What do you mean?” My gaze fell to his hand, startled to see the familiar claws gleaming at his fingertips. His skin was red again, scaly, his muscles tense and ready to spring. His disguise had vanished, and with it the drunken swirl of an aura that had existed around his head up until a moment ago. He was on the offensive now. And when I looked over my shoulder at the tavern floor, I realized why.

  The Fuzzy Lizard had gone completely still.

  The heat of hundreds of eyes seared into my skin. It felt like a spotlight had blown the roof wide open and was shining down upon us, illuminating the truth of our identities for everyone to see.

  We were standing on the universe’s biggest stage as, one by one, the entire bar stood and stared with greedy recognition in our direction.