A palpable ripple of discontent passed across the entirety of the Upper Ward. The Earthers sitting at a nearby bar grumbled under their breath. I heard one mutter, “Mr. Pervenio is losing his mind,” and another, “Great—next they’ll name one of the Ringers king, and we’ll wind up bowing to him. You’ll see.”
Talking heads appeared on the screens to discuss the announcement. Every Ringer in my vicinity stopped what they were doing and ignored their bosses’ shouts for them to return to work. It was hard to get a read on any of their expressions with their masks on, but many of the eyes I saw bled with contempt. Just like mine were.
The Departure was the main reason the majority of my people hated M-day, but it wasn’t because they were upset they couldn’t participate in the Lottery to win a place on an Ark-ship bound for the stars. It was because they believed that there was no reason to spend billions of credits on sending a ship beyond any realistic means of contact—that the Departure was a mockery of what Darien Trass had accomplished under the stress of a meteorite bearing down on Earth.
I’d never concerned myself with that before. If Earth-born citizens wanted to brave space, I was happy there’d be fewer of them. And yet, the Director’s line about requiring “all available immunizations” caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end and my teeth to grind. I knew firsthand how that essentially discounted 99 percent of Ringers, who if they’d been able to afford them, would obviously have sprung their loved ones from quarantine. It was like spitting in our faces. And holding the vote on the 10th, Trass Day, was just rubbing it in.
“Better off sending them all to Earth,” I heard one of the Pervenio security officers beside me whisper to his partner. “Maybe some real gravity will teach them to be human again.”
His partner snickered. “It’d solve our problem, that’s for sure.”
My fists clenched. I turned to face them, but before I could do anything impulsive, a bottle sailed across the atrium from somewhere behind me and smashed into the view-screen above. The impact was so loud that it sounded like a gunshot. Terrified screams rang out as I was showered in sparks.
“Keep your damn Lottery!” a voice hollered.
“Trass chose us!” shouted another.
“The Children of Titan already have a home!”
The ring of flowering plants wrapping the base of the Trass Memorial suddenly went up in flames. Then, while I stood frozen, the situation escalated beyond anything I’d ever experienced in the Uppers. A group of Ringer workers grabbed the security officer beside me and beat him with his own baton. They stole the pulse-rifle off his back and fired it at the officers attempting to subdue them.
The earsplitting sound of shouts and gunfire made my head spin. I was in the center of it all. I didn’t know what to do besides cover my ears until someone grabbed my arm. There was no telling how I would’ve reacted if the touch hadn’t been so tender.
“Kale, you’ve got to get out of here!” a woman yelled into my ear.
I turned my head and saw Cora. Her eyes were so close to mine and open so wide I could see all the myriad shades of blue encircling her pupils. I’d seen images of Neptune on view-screens, and even they couldn’t compare.
“Kale!” she repeated. I snapped out of my daze and ran with her. Security officers raced by us toward the fray, and I lowered my head so they wouldn’t notice my mask-covered face. It seemed pointless, considering how tall and lanky I was, but it worked.
We went as fast as we could. Blood-curdling screams and the sound of skulls cracking echoed across the Uppers as an endless stream of Pervenio security officers reestablished control. By the time we reached the lift down to the Lowers, I was so drenched in sweat it looked like I’d just been swimming. Groups of officers were positioned at every corner inside, wielding pulse-rifles now rather than batons. I leaned against the wall to catch my breath as we began to descend. Cora stood next to me. The heat hadn’t left her nearly as exhausted.
She leaned in so that nobody would hear her. “What were you doing up there?” she asked crossly, as if I’d done something wrong.
I thought about asking her the same thing, but I knew the answer. There was a reason the heat didn’t bother her, and it was the same reason she wasn’t wearing a sanitary mask or gloves: She was a hybrid in the truest sense of the word. Her mother was a Ringer dating back to the first settlers like mine, but she’d been impregnated with Cora by some vagrant Earther who’d forced himself on her. Ringer mothers unfortunate enough to have to endure that abuse typically died of illness before they could give birth, so Cora was a rarity. As such, she was embraced by my people and had a strong enough immune system to be willing to spend time in the Uppers.
Being mixed-race also meant she had a unique look to her, which only made her more stunning. Her neck was long and shapely, the way pretty Ringer girls’ were, but she was shorter than most and slightly curvier. She was also abnormally reticent for one of us. A majority of the Ringer girls I knew growing up were excessively outgoing, at least amongst their own kind.
I’d heard that before the Great Reunion, sex on Titan was as ordinary as conversation. Being crammed into tight, freezing living quarters when the Ring was first settled had had that effect on our ancestors. No longer. Monogamous relationships between Ringers was the way now. Sticking with someone you knew was safe went a long way toward avoiding quarantine. Honestly, the whole topic made me anxious. It was easy for Earthers, who with their vast clan-families didn’t have to worry about finding somebody, since it was usually arranged. Sometimes, I worried I was the only Ringer my age I knew who hadn’t already shacked up permanently with another person.
“Just passing through,” was what I managed to say after an extended period of silence. Seeing her outside of the Piccolo once was a rarity; twice in one day had me tongue-tied.
“Same,” she said. “Trass, I didn’t expect that. What’s Pervenio thinking?”
“Probably that they’re helping,” I said.
“Yeah.”
We stood in silence for the rest of the ride. Her being timid and me being nervous just from sharing her air made for a painfully awkward combo. The lift stopped at Level B3, and I followed her off, even though I had nothing to do there.
Outside of the central lift, we were greeted by a ring of decon-chambers. I thanked Trass everyone had to pass through them alone. I think I would’ve fainted if I’d gotten into one with Cora and had to watch her strip down.
I stepped out of mine—clean, thankfully—and then an alarm suddenly wailed behind me.
“Contagion detected,” an automated voice repeated over and over.
One of the chambers blinked red and Ringers throughout the node gathered to watch. Officers in hazmat suits ran through transparent halls stringing the decon-chambers together, and a short while later, I heard screams as a woman was dragged into an auxiliary lift. I didn’t get a clear look at who she was.
I searched the crowd in a panic but didn’t see Cora anywhere. Strong immune system or not, she looked enough like a Ringer, and that was a one-way ticket to quarantine, even if she’d probably survive it.
I shoved my way back through the accumulating crowd. I couldn’t deal with the idea of having to make two visits to the Q-Zone every day.
“Cora, there you are!” someone exclaimed.
Air fled my lungs in relief. I spun my head around and saw that she was safely exiting one of the other decon-chambers. A Ringer man jogged toward her, grinning.
I knew him well. Desmond Parks was another member of the Piccolo’s maintenance crew. He was the fastest maintenance worker on the ship, probably good enough to be a real mechanic one day if he didn’t like butting heads with the Earther crew members so much. It’s safe to say we weren’t friends. In fact, after leaving behind the shadows of the Lowers, I tried my best to avoid those. I considered Cora the closest I had to one, though our exchange on the lift was probably one of the longest continuous ones we’d ever had. Of course, she r
arely spoke much to anybody. Sitting across from her in the Piccolo mess hall for meals every day was more than enough for me.
“Oh, hey, Kale,” Desmond addressed me nonchalantly once we all convened. “Didn’t know you two were together.”
“We’re not!” I replied, much more loudly than I intended. My cheeks went hot when Cora shot me a perplexed glare.
Desmond rolled his eyes. “Whatever you say. C’mon, Cora. Lester and Yavik are waiting for us so that we can all load up before heading down to the Foundry. You coming, Kale?”
I wanted to. I couldn’t remember a day that I’d ever gotten to spend time with Cora outside of the Piccolo. Then I regarded her and remembered that I was no longer a member of that crew. In fact, I was currently unemployed... in a legal sense. I had no credits to waste on drinks. Only that salt-sniffer Dexter could help me with that.
Cora waited for an answer. The first thing that sputtered out of my mouth was: “I can’t right now.”
“Oh, right, I forgot,” Desmond said. “I heard our beloved captain is busy searching for your replacement now that you’ve stepped down.”
Cora stopped. She turned toward me, visibly shocked. “You’re leaving?” she asked softly.
“He didn’t tell you?” Desmond said. “Typical Kale. Got sick of kissing old Culver’s ass, I bet.”
I froze as well. Leave it to Desmond to ruin my plans to drop out as quietly as possible. But I hadn’t expected her to seem so disappointed.
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“Well, hopefully, your replacement isn’t as much of an Earther lover,” Desmond said, calling me that for a different reason than people from my old life used to. Just because I didn’t try to provoke fights during our shifts and focused on work so I could return to the coolness of my bed didn’t mean I wanted to kiss the captain.
I ignored Desmond and held Cora’s gaze. She was a girl of few words, but her expression was enough to make my chest tighten. “It’s only temporary,” I insisted.
She opened her mouth to say something, but Desmond grabbed her arm and towed her along. “Let’s go, Cora,” he said. “Leave him to his more important business.”
She stared back over her shoulder for a few seconds as they set off across the node toward one of the branching tunnels before she bit her lip and turned away, leaving me standing alone like a fool and worried that this was the last time I’d ever see her. I knew it was for the best I didn’t go, crew or not. It wasn’t worth the risk of a few drinks loosening up my tongue enough to where I might mention something about John, Dexter, or my mom. It wasn’t worth Desmond ridiculing me in front of her for not having a drink either.
“Bye,” I whispered as they disappeared into a tunnel.
It was time to focus on doing whatever I could to help my mom. Her condition was rapidly worsening. I exhaled, pushed Cora out of my head, and got back onto the lift. Dexter was waiting for me with work that might actually put a dent in the number of credits I needed to earn.
FIVE
It turned out that I was going to wind up at the Foundry that night, though not with anybody from the Piccolo. When I met with Dexter in his chop shop, he informed me he’d just received a tip from someone about the registered parts of Solnet. As usual, he said, it was going to be “as simple as finding a starving Ringer.” I doubted that, but I was glad the job didn’t include me going to the Uppers. After the riot in the atrium, there was bound to be so much security up there I’d have to cram through doors sideways.
My target was once again a hand-terminal, only this one didn’t belong to an Earther. I didn’t like stealing from Ringers, but Dexter’s contact wanted the information stored on it so badly he was offering ten thousand credits... close to double what John’s was worth. Enough to pay half a year’s worth of rent. The woman was supposedly an undercover Earther-sympathizing informant, trading information in exchange for special treatment.
The Foundry’s musty air filled my nostrils as I stepped in. It was a place Ringers went to forget—the largest, most renowned club in Darien. Once the site of a production factory on Level B5, it consisted of a series of gaping caverns. Male and female dancers in skintight plastic bodysuits like those in the Sunken Credit lined machine belts that cranked along through the swelling crowds of Ringers. Vibrant, pulsating lights refracted through clouds of mist that spilled out through exhaust vents once meant for safety. Bars were built into stacks of machinery, colorful bottles feeding through reallocated pumps to work the taps.
There was nothing else like it. In the Uppers, bars were quieter and filled with ads telling you what to drink and where to get it. In the Foundry, the rock-strewn walls were barren, and all that mattered were the hundreds of feet slapping across the floor as Ringers moved their bodies to pulsing beats. Earthers loved to tout their ancient stringed instruments and their slow-paced music, but I’d found those didn’t help anybody lose themselves. Trass’s settlers had no room for instruments on the Ark. My ears teemed with the synthesized rhythms of Titan.
I shuffled through a mob of masked men and women. Some of them swayed from drinking too much. Others danced like their lives depended on it, pupils rolled up into the back of their heads, probably from sniffing foundry salts. Sweat spraying in every direction made the floor slick. Shower stalls by the exit were available to be used whenever anybody wanted. Rudimentary decon-chambers stood at the entrance. There was everything necessary to help the Ringer patrons feel safe so they could unwind.
I’d enjoyed nights at the Foundry plenty of times, but I hadn’t been in the mood since the news about my mom. It didn’t feel right to dance or indulge, and drinking was the only way I could get myself to feel comfortable amongst the undulant crowd. I stuck to the walls and kept a lookout for Cora or Desmond. Wherever they were, I didn’t want them to spot me.
My mark was across the club. The far side of the Foundry was lined by raised suites with broad, tinted translucencies. They’d once been observation rooms for the factory but were presently used as private suites for some of the Foundry’s wealthier guests. According to Dexter’s contact, the terminal I was after was in the one on the far right.
Easy enough. Usually, I had to scope out locations, but the suite would be a single hollow, maybe with an adjoining bathroom. The only issue was getting inside.
An intimidating guard was posted at the base of the stairs leading up to the suite. He or she wore shiny white carbon-plated armor and a helmet with a visor so tinted that it was impossible to tell what was behind it. The pulse-rifle on his or her back was much newer than the ones Dexter’s goons touted. That was going to be a problem, but the guard would have to piss eventually. I’d have to time the shift changes and figure out when to slip in.
I skulked over to an abandoned piece of machinery being reclaimed as a table, overlooking a group of dancers. It was the perfect spot from which to pretend I wasn’t watching the suite. I was about to take a seat on one of the stools, when out of the corner of my eye, I noticed silvery hair.
I rushed around the side and ducked beside what had been a storage bin. Cora, Desmond, and a few more Ringer members of the Piccolo’s crew shoved across the dance floor toward my position, fresh drinks in their hands.
They seated themselves at the table, so close to me I could see their legs swaying through gaps in the machine’s base. I couldn’t hear anything over the blasting music, but Desmond and his friends were chatting it up like always. Cora remained silent. She seemed as somber as when I’d left her. I hoped it wasn’t thanks to me.
Spilled drinks made my latex-clad hands stick to the rock as I stayed crouched. The floor had its own unique stench. More than a few people had clearly chosen to vomit in the bin beside me, with many hitting the side instead. I distanced my head as far as I could and focused on the suite. Three guards in identical white armor were outside now. Two marched down the stairs, and between them sauntered the woman I assumed the suite belonged to. Dexter hadn’t given me a name or description,
but I didn’t need them. A glittering velvet dress hugged her lithe figure, cut high up on her thighs. It was an outfit of such extravagance that there was no wonder she needed the guards. True Ringer or not, she stuck out in the Lowers like my people did above.
She reached the bottom of the stairs in a frantic state and turned her head. Long, silken brown hair swept over her shoulders, and for a moment, it seemed like her eyes locked on me. I felt a chill. She was beautiful, but not in the way I was used to. There was ferocity to her features, like she knew she could have anyone she wanted pawing at her feet.
I was spellbound. Then she turned, hollered something at her guards, and they all hurried away. It didn’t take long before the sparkle of her dress vanished within the mob of lanky Ringers. Questions like who she was and why in the name of Trass she was staying in the Lowers filled my mind. They were hushed when I realized that, in her rush, the lift door to her suite hadn’t closed all the way. Jammed or broken, a rift along the bottom revealed the flicker of view-screens changing feeds beyond.
“It’ll be easy,” Dex had said to me about the job. I wondered if he had anything to do with getting her to rush out. There was no time to care.
“Sorry, guys,” I whispered under my breath. I knocked into the machinery hard enough for one of the empty glasses on the portion being used as a table to fall off and shatter. Cora yelped. Desmond cursed. The move distracted my former crewmates for the few seconds I needed to sprint out toward the suite.
A pack of cavorting drunkards helped provide cover on my approach. Scantily clad dancers handled the rest. I casually leaned on the suite’s stairs once I made it over, pretending I’d drunk a little too much and was having trouble standing. With my peripherals, I studied the door. My eyes hadn’t been playing a trick on me. A bottle lay on its side in the opening, causing the fail-safes to keep it from closing all the way. The door was open, just enough, I figured, for my skinny body to fit through.
Titan's Son: (Children of Titan Book 2) Page 5
