by Kate MacLeod
“If you’re sure they don’t suspect you,” Scout said.
“And that they won’t suspect you had a part in us escaping,” Emilie added.
“That thing you did to spoof the security systems? I could never do a thing like that. Once they discover it, they’ll never even suspect me,” Sparrow said.
“I hope so,” Scout said. “Are you really, really sure? We have enough room for you on the ship. You don’t have to do this alone.”
“I’m sure,” Sparrow said. “And I’m not alone. I have other friends in the compound and on the ship. I’ll be okay. But you guys should go.”
“How are we escaping?” Geeta asked.
“By glider,” Daisy said, unslinging the cylinder from her back and taking out one for each of them. She snapped hers open to demonstrate the wings. Geeta and Emilie looked intrigued, Geeta almost excited, but Seeta looked like she wanted to be ill.
“It’s easier than it looks, once you’re off the island,” Scout promised her.
“But how do we get off the island?” Seeta asked.
“Back the way we came,” Daisy said.
“There’s a grate on the bottom of the island,” Scout explained. “You’ll just jump down, and the glider will catch you.”
“That sounds doable,” Seeta agreed, taking one of the gilders and running her fingertips over the delicate plastic supports.
“Do we need to finish off this food before—” Scout started to say when the sudden wail of loud alarms drowned her out.
Sparrow’s face went pale. She said something, but her words were lost in the shriek of the alarms. She bit her lip, looking unsure of what to do. But then she raised her arms, herding them all out into the garden.
Scout skidded to a halt, amazed by the immense dome of sky that hung over the garden. It was deepest indigo, like no sky she had ever seen, and filled with a depth of stars.
Fake. It had to be. The sky here was always pink.
The sound of the alarm was no less shrill here, even though it looked as though they were outdoors. Sparrow pointed to the lowest part of the wall and Daisy ran up it, leaping and putting a foot on the rim of one of the gigantic planters, then reaching up and catching the edge of the wall and pulling herself up to sit on it. She quickly found a fine rope in one of her pockets and lowered it down to the grass.
Geeta climbed up after, then turned to help her sister manage the last meter. Emilie came up next.
Scout turned to try to speak to Sparrow one last time, then saw the heavy door swinging open behind her. She tried to push the last of the gliders into Sparrow’s hands, but Sparrow wouldn’t take it.
Then the door was fully open, the guards looking first to the beds and then to the table before turning their attention to the garden.
Scout gave the loudest, angriest yell her throat could muster, swinging the glider with both hands to strike Sparrow as hard as she could. The flimsy plastic exploded into a cascade of tiny pieces, and Sparrow was quite unhurt.
But Sparrow was also clever. She fell to the ground as if knocked over by the blow and lay there as if unable to move as Scout climbed up after the others.
Scout found she could see the sky beyond the wall, but it was like looking through thick, dark glass. Everything was tinged a murky blue. She searched until she caught sight of her friends. Daisy was circling nearby in her glider, hovering like a mother bird as Geeta and Seeta made their first struggling attempts to work out how to use the wings.
Emilie had waited for Scout. She gave Scout one of her signature wide grins.
“Ready to jump?” she asked. From the top of the wall, she could just be heard over the cacophony below.
“Together,” Scout said, ignoring the wail of alarms behind her and the sound of feet pounding towards her.
“Go!” she and Emilie cried together, and they jumped, bursting past the deep blue field of stars and out into the rosy pink void.
12
The clouds closed in around them as if somehow ordered to by the Months. Scout had intended to fly over to where Daisy was circling around Seeta and Geeta, but they had vanished from sight.
She tried to stay close to Emilie’s side, but she couldn’t get too close, not with as much wobbling as Emilie was doing as she worked out the mechanics of flight. Wisps of cloud intruded between them, sometimes obscuring Emilie’s form to a mere hint of a shadow, but Scout never totally lost sight of her.
A cold wind rose up as suddenly as the cloud bank had and chased the thick moisture away. Scout first looked to Emilie, a little below and to her left. Then she found Daisy and the others up ahead, far enough ahead that her glasses adjusted a bit to bring them into detail.
Then she looked back and saw guards spilling out of the Months’ compound like wasps forming an attack swarm.
There were so many of them. Where had they been hiding?
The fastest way to the port was across the center of the Galactic Central cloud, which was bringing them close to the two main islands and the marketplace bridge. When Scout focused her eyes forward again to see if Daisy had noticed their pursuit, she saw that Daisy was, in fact, leading Seeta and Geeta closer to the city. The skies here were dotted with more kids with gliders, circling in lazy groups or zipping around in makeshift races. Was Daisy hoping for cover?
Then more figures boiled up from the streets and alleys of the marketplace, leaping off rooftops or the sides of the bridge to launch themselves up into the sky.
Figures in black. Scout’s heart skipped a beat in fear that the Months had somehow outflanked them. Had Sparrow betrayed them?
But no, these were Sparrow’s minions, and they were flying all around Daisy, Seeta, and Geeta.
They closed in so tight of a formation that Scout could no longer see her friends, just a sea of black figures dangling from black gliders.
Then Daisy suddenly erupted from the scrum, zooming past Scout, back the way they had come, so quickly there was no chance to shout out a word to her.
She had fired another rocket, and now she was charging directly at their pursuers.
The Months’ guards were not the best of fliers, losing control of their gliders and tumbling out of the sky as they tried too enthusiastically to get out of Daisy’s way.
Daisy banked and came back up alongside Scout and Emilie.
“She’s getting the hang of it,” Daisy said to Scout, pointing with her chin back at Emilie. Emilie had a look of intense focus on her face, but all that focus was paying off. Scout hadn’t flown half so smoothly her first few tries.
“They’ll regroup,” Scout said, then looked back over her shoulder. “Are regrouping.”
“We can’t lose them in the sky,” Daisy said. “Not even with the kids’ help. Let’s land in the marketplace and lose them in the crowds.”
“Got it,” Scout said. Then Daisy caught an updraft and rode it high into the air, diving back down to where Seeta and Geeta were flying in a thick hive of protective gliders.
“We’re going to land,” Scout called to Emilie.
“How does that work?” Emilie asked.
“We’re going to the far side of the bridge. There’s an open plaza there with a fountain; that’s the largest open space on these two islands. It will still be crowded with people, but unlike buildings, they’ll probably get out of the way when they see you coming.”
“Okay,” Emilie said, her eyes scanning until Scout could tell she had spotted the landmark. “Then what? Just put my feet down?”
“The bridge has gravity. Once you’re in the field, it will be hard not to land,” Scout told her. “I’ll go first if you like?”
Emilie gave a tight nod, and Scout banked around, circling the plaza once before dropping low. Her circle took her in and out of the gravity field, sort of like when she used to pump her brakes on her bike to keep from skidding.
When she was nearly low enough to touch the ground, she got her feet under her and folded her wings against her side. She landed in a run
that she quickly slowed to a walk, then stopped to watch Emilie coming down behind her.
Emilie’s feet touched and ran; then she was back up in the air. She dropped low enough to touch and run again, but another breeze picked her up.
“Fold your wings!” Scout called out to her.
This time Emilie landed in more of a stumble than a run, but Scout rushed forward to catch her before she could fall to the unforgiving flagstones.
“Nice,” Scout said.
“Shame we can’t stay,” Emilie said with a manic grin. “This was just getting fun.”
“Fold it up like this,” Scout said, demonstrating by transforming her own glider back into a walking stick. “We’re going to need it again.”
Emilie managed it on the first try, even giving the stick a little juggling twirl on the end.
And of course, she had that big grin on her face.
Scout’s answering smile froze on her face as she saw the Months’ guards spiraling out of the sky all around them.
“Come on,” Scout said, giving Emilie’s sleeve a tug and then running through the public house archways into the marketplace proper.
“What about the others?” Emilie asked as she ran beside her.
“We’ll have to find each other later,” Scout said. “Through here.” She led the way between two of the shops, a gap in the buildings that was not really even an alley. They had to turn their shoulders sideways to get through.
The space behind was a bit wider, but still not truly an alley, as there was no way in or out. And yet someone had been here in the past, to judge by the piles of discarded trash and the faint scent of old urine.
“They’re still coming,” Emilie said as Scout looked around and found a gutter to scale up to the shop roofs. Emilie came up behind her, and they both squatted low, watching their pursuers scour the space.
None of them looked up, and Scout was just about to release her long-held breath when one of them consulted something on her wrist, then pointed directly up at Emilie.
Scout and Emilie scrambled back from the edge, then got to their feet and ran from rooftop to rooftop.
They reached the taller shops, the one with owners who lived on the second floor. Scout hopped over the railing to a private balcony, Emilie close behind her. Then she vaulted over the edge, dangling from her fingertips for a moment before dropping to the crowded street below.
Emilie dropped down beside her and without a word they started walking, blending in with the crowd. In the usual way that Scout didn’t want to ask too much about, Emilie started acquiring things: a gray hat to cover her hair, a festoon of ribbons to adorn the end of her staff. Scout dug through her own pockets, wrapping a blue scarf over her own hair and leaving it to dangle around her shoulders.
From above anyway, they might be easy to miss in the crowd.
“They knew where you were,” Scout said in a whisper.
“I was afraid of that,” Emilie said. “I was fairly certain they had put a tracker in Seeta. I wasn’t so sure about Geeta and me, but I guess there were opportunities.”
Scout led Emilie to the end of the main drag of the garment district, then took two lefts so that they were going back the way they had come, but this time through the food courts. It was even more crowded here, the air thick with the smell of frying street food and sticky sweets.
“They’re still behind us,” Emilie hissed. “Do we run?”
“It seems like they don’t want to make a scene,” Scout said, glancing back at the guards following them. They were keeping the two of them in sight but weren’t shoving people aside to get to them.
Yet.
“We’ll stay in crowds,” Scout said. “This way.”
She grabbed Emilie’s arm and pulled her inside the public house. She stopped just inside, waiting for her glasses to adjust to the low light.
“There you are!” It was Sammy. He grabbed them each by an arm and pulled them down to the lower level and through a narrow doorway to a short hallway that led to the kitchens. He gave them a little push into a corner away from most of the cooking action and was gone as suddenly as he had appeared.
“Who was that?” Emilie asked.
“Friend of Daisy,” Scout said, noticing an even smaller door behind a stack of crates. She ducked down into it and was nearly knocked to the ground by a pair of strong arms wrapping around her.
“Scout!” Daisy cried.
“We have a problem,” Scout said after quickly ascertaining that Seeta and Geeta were also there in the darkness.
“The public house blocks trackers,” Daisy told her.
“But that only buys us a little time,” Scout said. “They saw us come in here, and they’ll see us leave.”
“There’s a secret way,” Daisy said.
“Of course there is,” Scout said, “but we’ll pop right back up on their screens when they go out.”
“You should leave me here,” Seeta said. “I can make them chase me, buy you time to get out of here.”
“No,” Geeta said.
“Geeta—” Seeta started to say.
“It won’t matter,” Emilie said. “They were following me too. Odds are they can track Geeta as well.”
“What do we do?” Seeta asked.
“Get the trackers out?” Daisy said, but it was obvious by the uplift of her voice that she wasn’t sure how that could be done.
“They’re going to find us,” Geeta said.
“Sammy will buy us as much time as he can,” Daisy said.
“To do what?” Geeta asked.
“Fight them all,” Daisy said, making a tight fist.
“No,” Scout said. “No, there’s got to be another way.”
“How are we going to find it?”
Scout felt everyone’s eyes on her. She didn’t know what to do.
But she knew someone who might.
Scout shut her eyes and scrunched up her entire face, but there were no other options left. “Hello, Teacher,” she said.
“Hello, Scout,” Warrior said, suddenly appearing among them. Emilie looked up at the AI as if waiting for her to speak. Geeta and Seeta couldn’t see her, but they were looking from Scout’s face to Emilie’s to see if they could read from their expressions what was happening.
“What? What is this?” Daisy asked, reaching out to touch Warrior. Warrior held out her own hand so that Daisy could watch her fingers pass through it.
“It’s a teaching AI,” Scout said. “Warrior, how do we remove the trackers from Emilie, Seeta, and Geeta?”
“Look at them with your glasses. Can you see the trackers?” Warrior asked.
Scout focused on Emilie, willing her glasses to know what she was searching for. Just when she was about to give up, she saw it, dots like microscopic stars all through her body.
She looked at Seeta and Geeta and saw the same. If anything, Seeta glowed brighter than the other two.
“Do you see?” Scout asked.
“I can now,” Daisy said, although Scout had been talking to Warrior.
“Nanites,” Warrior said.
“I was hoping it would be something we could dig out with a knife,” Emilie grumbled. “How do we get rid of this?”
“I have something,” Daisy said, digging through her pockets. “I picked them up from one of the packs on Schneeheim. They used them to wipe out the nanites that let you function in low gravity and little oxygen, remember?” She found what she was looking for and held it out for the others to see: a collection of tiny darts. Darts with some shining liquid stored in their shafts.
“You had extras?” Scout asked.
“You never know what might come in handy,” Daisy said. “Will it work?”
She held out the darts to Warrior, who examined them without touching them. “Try it,” she said at last.
“That’s not reassuring,” Emilie said but took the canisters from Daisy’s hand. She and the sisters gathered in a huddle to poke themselves with the darts' needle-like ti
ps other under Warrior’s watchful eye.
While they were busy with that, Scout turned to Daisy. “You didn’t know?”
“How could I?” Daisy asked. “You never showed me.”
“Bo gave her to me when I was on his ship. Shi Jian wasn’t there when it happened, but she knew later. I guess I told myself if she knew, you knew.”
“But I didn’t,” Daisy said. “You kept this AI a secret. When I think how many times we could have used her help . . .”
“She did help,” Scout said. “When we were scaling the cliff on Schneeheim, and I shot the rope and dropped the assassins back down to the road. She was there, helping me.”
“And when I got to the top she was gone,” Daisy said.
Scout bit her lip. Daisy sounded even more hurt than Scout had expected her to be.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you,” Scout said.
“The journey here, when you were too sick to move. I was so scared. I really could have used her advice then,” Daisy said.
“You kept secrets too, though,” Scout said defensively. “Every day you went off somewhere you wouldn’t tell me, doing work you wouldn’t tell me about. Under a fake name.”
“That’s different,” Daisy said.
“Is it?” Scout asked.
“Yes,” Daisy said. “I didn’t tell you about that because I just didn’t want to talk about it. I was ashamed.”
“Ashamed? Why would you be ashamed?”
“Because it was the only job I could get,” Daisy said. “I was built to be an assassin, but that’s not a job I will ever do. And everywhere I asked for work, they suggested I would make a fine mercenary or soldier. That’s not much different, really. In the end, the owner of the public house would hire me to bounce out unruly patrons, but not to cook or wait tables. Said it would be a waste of my natural talents.”
“Oh, Daisy,” Scout said, her heart breaking for her friend.
“This isn’t all I am,” Daisy said, flexing one enhanced arm. It didn’t look much different than any other teenager’s arm. Not until she flexed it like that and the muscles like steel writhed up to the surface.