by Ann Aguirre
Maybe I’ll buy a fifth of something fun before I go home. . . . After all, it was Honors Countdown, right? The Flash were partying. Why shouldn’t we? Better alcohol than chems. Maybe if I got to him fast enough, I could convince Derry to have a drink with me instead.
Three blocks over, an entrepreneur sold rough homebrew out of a leaky still, and it would blur the edges. Waving to Conde, who was already working on the unit to break it down, I let myself out. It was second nature to scan my surroundings to make sure nobody had tracked me, but I’d been doing this a while, and the coast seemed clear. Tucking my pay into my undervest, I sauntered down to Moonshine Charlene’s. As usual, she was sitting on her front stoop in her housecoat, which was more than a little grimy. Came from using her bathroom for business instead of hygiene, I suspected. Her hands were filthy, but the process of fermentation would kill any bacteria, so I didn’t let it trouble me.
“Got anything good?”
“You know it, cookie.” She rose with an audible pop. “You want sour mash, dirty gin, or dry lightning?”
“Surprise me.”
While she went inside to fill a plastic bottle with cloudy amber goodness, I extracted exactly enough coin to get the crew buzzed.
“You look like a dry lightning girl to me. Enjoy.” Moonshine Charlene settled on her porch with a grunt.
Deal made, I hid my contraband in a milky old-days plastic bag. Wasn’t especially worried anybody would try to jump me for it, but I knew better than to tempt fate . . . or other crims. People who preferred life in the Zone to Paradise also tended to make their own rules. Me included.
Ever since I was little, my personal file had been marked with judgments like “violent tendencies,” “impulse control issues,” and “serious problems with authority.” My family had been fractured a long time—my mother and sister had tried hard, but I hadn’t been right with living in Paradise, not like they were. Now they were gone, off to a new life on Mars, and all I had left—if you could call it that—was my father.
Better to think of myself as an orphan.
Currently I was supposed to be banged up in a reform facility learning to be an upstanding member of society, but like all the other group homes, Parkview couldn’t keep me for more than a couple of days. Derry always came, and when Derry appeared outside my window, he meant freedom. And freedom was pretty much all I wanted.
I stopped at a street stall and bought a bag of steamed meat buns to go with the homebrew, and there was still a reassuring jingle of coins in my pouch. More good stuff tomorrow, it promised. My belly growled, reminding me that I’d had nothing but a handful of sticky rice sometime yesterday, but going hungry sometimes was a proper tradeoff since I no longer had people telling me when to run, read, eat, shower, shit, and sleep.
I also no longer had anyone whispering that I was bent and wrong, a failure and a burden. Humming a few bars of a song that had been playing in Conde’s shop, I turned down the cul-de-sac half-barricaded by rubbish bins that led to our little corner of the world.
Something was very wrong in our world. I’d walked up on a face-off.
Derry held a broken board, his pretty mouth curled back in a snarl. His coppery hair shimmered like nanotech magic, and his pale skin was smooth, despite rough living and the chems he couldn’t give up. I knew him, down to the shadows in his eyes, the shake in his hands. He’d scored something while I was gone.
And it was wearing off hard.
A man in a suit stood facing him. Facing them. The rest of our crew—Lo, Timo, JJ—had bottles or blades, but they all seemed wary. Odd, since it was only the one guy. But he wore an expensive Paradise suit, custom-tailored, and I made out the telltale bulge of concealed weapons under the fabric.
One knife too, and maybe a second shoulder holster. This is not good. What was he doing here? He wasn’t slumming it. He hadn’t just stumbled on us, either.
The stranger had deep-set eyes, a prominent brow, and jaw that could crack open a beer. Not a handsome face but a strong one, fearless even. He half turned at my quiet approach. His smile chilled my blood.
“Ah,” he said. “There you are. I’ve been waiting.”
I put the booze and food down; no sense in having it get in the way. As I did, I let the folded knife drop from my sleeve into my palm. Not open yet. I didn’t want him expecting it. “You don’t know me.”
“Zara Cole. You made a mistake today.” The gentle tone contrasted completely with the promise of violence in the man’s flexing hands. “Your last, gutter rat. Where’s the box?”
He took a step toward me.
I didn’t back off. I’d learned fear made you weak if you paid mind to it. But he’d said the box, not the purse. And I was thinking about the broken metal case I’d hidden in the alley, and the shimmering chem in my pocket.
“Get away from her,” Derry growled.
He might as well have been talking to the wind for all the attention the suit gave him. “Do you know what you did wrong?” the man asked me softly.
“It’s a long list,” I said.
The man laughed. “Did you think we wouldn’t come looking? It was easy to ID you. Witnesses tend to be cooperative when you mention Torian Deluca’s daughter.”
Oh shit.
Even I’d heard of the legendary Deluca. In the rush to rebuild on the ruins of Old Detroit, he’d come up hungry and ruthless. He’d made billions from strong-arm deals, but these days, he was a legit businessman with a lingering reputation for cruelty. People said he was rich and crazy, but never within the big man’s earshot.
And I robbed his daughter.
I should have known that strutting bitch had never felt afraid a day in her life—for good reason. Daddy’s rep was an invisible shield. But this? It still seemed like an overreaction.
“Yeah? Better call the cops,” I said, and squared my shoulders. Finger on the switch to open the knife.
“Mr. Deluca prefers private justice.”
That didn’t sound so good. I pictured myself tied to a chair, beaten to a pulp. Days later he’d hide my corpse in the foundation of some real estate development. My ass. I’m not going out like that.
It’s five against one. We can fight it out.
This ugly suit was reading my mind, because he smiled even wider and drew his gun. “Drop the knife.”
“Run!” I shouted, and took my own advice, but I wasn’t fast enough.
Deluca’s strongman ignored the rest of the crew as they scattered and was on me before I took three steps. He twisted my arm behind my back, and I went with it, rolling my shoulder so it popped out of the socket. This wasn’t the first time I’d used that trick, and the flash of pain didn’t slow me down. I kicked hard at his knee but couldn’t get the right angle, so my foot raked down his shin. Painful, but he didn’t seem to care.
The guy laughed, digging his fingers with intent to bruise. “I guess you already know how this turns out.”
From behind him, Derry said, “Yeah? You don’t.” He slammed the board upside the guy’s head, hard enough to stun. His face was set like one of the Paradise statues.
The suit let go of me, and I lurched forward, tumbling into a rubbish heap a few meters away. Glass broke my fall and sliced into the skin above my elbow. The stink of rotten food mingled with the coppery tang of my blood. As I stumbled to my feet, the thug charged, and at the last second, I used the wet garbage to skid aside, narrowly avoiding a hit that would’ve dropped me. Rebounding on the wall, I kicked off to a better defensive position while the goon rounded on me.
Derry booted him toward me as I searched for something—anything—to use as a weapon. There was a pile of broken pipes nearby, so I grabbed one and swung for the fences. The impact toppled him sideways and he landed hard on a metal cylinder that speared right through his fine suit. He coughed, tried to breathe, flailed . . . and went still.
He was dead. Really, really dead. The shakes set in.
I won’t panic. I can’t.
Th
e others had already disappeared. It didn’t matter that we’d been together for six months. Survival and freedom at any cost, right? Only Derry didn’t leave. He dropped the board and wrapped his arms around me, not saying a word about how I should’ve known better, even though it was true. I held him hard, listening to his heart.
Stroking my back in soothing sweeps, he whispered, “We’ll hide the body and disappear. Nobody will ever know.”
From Honorspedia, August 21, 2142
HONORS, THE: A program administered by the Worldwide Honors Selection Committee (WHSC, see topic) under the direction of the nonhuman race collectively known as the Leviathan.
Program announced on September 1, 2042, following humanity’s first encounter with the Leviathan at the International Space Station, where the Leviathan rescued ten doomed astronauts (see topic, film, documentaries).
The Honors program a) provides a worldwide database of humans between the ages of sixteen and forty and b) contacts, transports, and trains those selected as Honors each year. Selection of one hundred Honors per year is done by a representative Elder Leviathan. It is unknown what process they use to select these individuals, but statistically, a higher proportion of scientists and musicians have been chosen than would seem probable (see the Lao Formula for detailed calculations). Recently, the Lao Formula has been amended with a new weighting variable to account for an increasing number of outlier selections from nontraditional areas and specialties, including two selections last year of military specialists.
Of the Honors chosen to travel with the Leviathan each year, most—an average of 92 percent—retire from the program after carrying word to their replacement Honors of their selection. The remaining average 8 percent is chosen to, and agrees to, take the Journey (see topic), a lifetime commitment to travel as part of a Leviathan crew.
Although no one knows what occurs on the Journey, some experts speculate that the Leviathan are learning as much from humanity as humanity is from them, and that this may pose a potential security issue for the future. [citation needed] [unattributed] [marked for deletion]
CHAPTER TWO
Breaking In
POPPING MY SHOULDER back into place wasn’t pretty. I managed not to yelp as Derry twisted and pressed. Once the bone slipped back into the socket, the pain gave me a hard, electric jolt and then subsided. I breathed through it. Like always.
“Good,” Derry said, but I could tell his attention was on the dead man impaled on the pipes a few meters away. “Help me get him off there?”
“Tarp first.”
I was the practical one, the planner, and Derry went to salvage some scrap of plastic big enough to wrap the body. I walked over to stare at the corpse. Didn’t bother me, though it was gruesome.
He provoked us, I reassured myself. Who sends a kill order over a stolen purse?
That made no kind of sense . . . except to a narcissistic sociopath like Torian Deluca. The box might have held his daughter’s personal chem stash or maybe it went deeper, but this was also about his stung ego. By exterminating me, he’d wipe off the stain to his pride and send a message to anyone who might be thinking of messing with his property.
This wouldn’t end like he wanted. I wouldn’t go out that way.
That was what I tried to tell myself. But despite Derry’s apparent coolness, he was still shaky, coming off whatever he’d scored while I was out hunting up our lunch money. I wondered how much he’d spent on his high. And where he’d gotten the coin.
While Derry was gone, I rifled the corpse’s pockets and came up with an H2, late-model thing, encrypted. It didn’t have a simple fingerprint unlock; I tried pressing the dead thumb to it, to no effect. Deluca bought next-level stuff. We can take it to Conde, I thought, but then realized that wouldn’t be smart; Deluca would have real-time tracking on his men, and finding this device would be child’s play. Conde would kill me if I left him exposed like that, and he’d never touch this if he knew how bloody it was. He was probably pissed enough that I’d sold him stuff stolen off a Deluca.
I’d seen him crack enough cases to know the basics, so I grabbed a thin piece of metal—had been a fork once, maybe—and pried the thing open. The chip sat nestled in the center of all those tiny connections, gleaming lush gold. I yanked it out, put it on the cracked pavement, and used a brick to bash it to pieces.
Then I pocketed the device. What Conde didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, and it’d be a waste to destroy such a pretty piece of work. I could sell it later, probably.
The dead man had a fat pouch of old currency coins instead of an e-money card, which I guess wasn’t a surprise; he was a crim, after all. Funny. I was making more off his death than I got off Deluca’s daughter. You killed somebody. You should feel bad about it.
But I didn’t. He’d been a dick, and now he was dead, and that was that.
Derry came back with a tattered but sturdy length of plastic from the dump nearby, and together we lifted the body off the pipes with a nasty squelch. It leaked, but the tarp took care of the mess. I tied it closed around his neck, waist, and feet with scrounged bits of wire and cord.
Swiping the sweat from my face left a smear; I felt the stickiness of blood, breathed in the copper. I’d forgotten about the gash on my arm. If enforcement scans the scene, they’ll find it’s lousy with my DNA. Not that enforcement spent a minute more than they had to out here in the Lower Eight anyway.
“Z,” Derry said then, as I secured the last bit, and I looked up at him. His face was set and pale, and there was a bad tremor in his hands. “They’ll kill us for this.”
“Deluca won’t call in the cops,” I said.
“Doesn’t matter. He sent this snake for you, and he’ll keep coming.”
“Then we run.”
“Where? Where does Deluca not get us?” Derry’s eyes shone bright amber with fear. He’d comforted me at the start, but reaction must be setting in, and he was starting to think about his own chances. Plus, he was coming down; he’d been on and off the stuff as long as I’d known him. For some, that was how they coped with life in the Zone. I never asked why, because in the Zone, the past was a minefield, and some borders shouldn’t be crossed.
I hesitated, considering the chem in my pocket, rich-girl goodies, probably potent as hell. I should give it to him. But I’d been trying to keep Derry off the stuff. But it might keep him focused. You need him steady.
It surprised me a little to be so calm as I analyzed our odds of escape. Damn. Derry’s right. Torian Deluca had a worldwide reach. He was absurdly rich, ruthless, and dedicated. You didn’t get to stand where he did without being willing to commit to the body count.
“I didn’t kill his kid, I just stole her purse! He might let it go.”
“Now?” Derry tilted his head at the body. “You think? That guy sure acted like this was bigger than a snatch and grab.”
He was right. Getting rid of the suit had been necessary, one way or another, but his death opened up a whole new barrel of shit. “We sell his device and use the cash to get out,” I said. “Way out. We’re not on the net anyway. He’ll have a shit time tracking us once we’re off our usual turf.”
Derry didn’t look convinced. I wasn’t either, but it was our best hope.
At last he nodded. “We’ll bury him in the dump. Let’s go.”
Quickly, I found a tattered, filthy rug that someone had set out for garbage collection. While the Zone might not be as surveillance-hot as Paradise, we’d still draw unwanted eyes hauling a bloody, person-shaped plastic package. I rolled the body up in it and then doused the area with the grog I’d bought earlier. If I was lucky, the cheap booze would degrade the evidence.
Since when have you ever been lucky, Z?
“Ready?” I asked.
In answer, he shouldered half the burden. The suit had been a big guy, and dead, he seemed to weigh twice as much. Derry was shaking, pasty, unsteady, but he managed.
Wasn’t pleasant, but we did it, sweating, mouths and
noses covered against the stench as we carved out a deep trench in the mountains of trash—we called it Mount Olympus—and dumped the rolled body into it. I’d have scavenged the nice suit, but the pipes had ruined it, along with the blood. I shoved trash over his makeshift grave. In less than half an hour, he’d vanished without a trace.
Time for us to do the same.
Our friends hadn’t come back, but attachments were flexible around here. They could smell danger a mile off, and I didn’t blame them for scrambling. This place would be blown for a while as Deluca sent thugs to search for his man. They might find him in the dump. They might not. But they’d rip apart anybody they found in the area to ask questions.
Better if our crew found new friends. Other holes to hide in.
We were three blocks from Conde’s when I saw the black tail of smoke rising, and a cold feeling crawled up my spine. It can’t be Conde. Everybody deals with Conde. He’s got protection.
Some sinister whisper in the back of my mind said, From Deluca? Nobody does.
Derry didn’t say anything, but we exchanged a look and broke into a run. The streets were strangely bare now; the rats of the Lower Eight knew when to go underground, and they must have sensed real trouble.
Real trouble they had. The entire block of Conde’s shop was deserted, not a single face in a window. The acrid smell of smoke hung everywhere, and something worse.
Burned flesh.
Derry and I turned the corner and stopped. We just stared at the smoldering hole where Conde’s building had been. Deluca had tracked the purse. He’d probably raided the place, searched it, and not found what he was looking for.
