“It does here,” he said.
“That’s for damn sure.”
Basaam sighed and sat with his back against the bars of my cell. He broke off a piece of his ration bar and held it through. “Here, there’s no reason for us to fight when we’re in the same position. It’s chicken-flavored.”
Considering all I’d had for days was a bowl of bland, chunky gruel, I wasn’t about to let pride keep me from something that tasted decent. “Thanks,” I said.
“Jumara hired me out of Phobos Academy when I was so young. All I ever wanted to do was make Sol a better place.”
“I always thought I was,” I said with a full mouth. “At least you probably did it.”
“You’ve seen their armor? That muscle-enhancing, nano-weave underlay was my very first patent out of the academy. I watched the Piccolo attack and had to wonder if Madame Venta sold the tech to them just to get one over on Luxarn. Their ship, the Cora? It may have been Luxarn’s, but its impulse engine was my prototype.”
“And some poor bastard on ancient Earth probably invented a gun so he could protect his home. We’re humans; turning things into weapons is what we do. It’s the thumbs.”
“Thumbs.” He chuckled. “Right. I just hoped we were more evolved than slaughtering each other like this.”
“Then you weren’t paying attention.”
“Basaam, get over here!” Desmond shouted from the other side of the hollow.
Basaam hung his head, then stood. “Duty calls,” he said.
“Just do me a favor and don’t build them anything that works before I’m able to do like I promised and get you both out of here.”
“Then you better hurry, Collector, because I’ve never been good at disobeying orders. I know you may think I’m a naïve fool, but I believe in people doing the right thing in the end. Even them.”
That was another thing about brainiacs. They held humanity to impossible standards. I actually pitied the man as I watched him traverse the start of his masterpiece. Welders and engineers had begun to construct a giant sphere made from who-knows-what-kind of impossibly durable alloy.
“You’re not going to get into anybody’s h-h-head,” Desmond said, approaching from the other side. “You just get to w-watch your own work.”
“That’s what they all sa—” The words died on my tongue as I spotted someone with Basaam who I could never forget.
My throat went dry.
My fingers slowly wrapped the bars of my cell, ignoring how cold the metal was.
I watched her saunter across the cavern as Basaam instructed her about what he was doing. She wore a form-fitting dress that could have a weaker man lapping out of a saucer at her feet. Rylah had been the top information broker on the Ring before we lost touch and things on Titan went haywire. Now, she was high enough in Kale’s regime to be here with Basaam and it was evident whose side she was really on.
It wasn’t always that way. There was a time, long ago, Rylah made Titan worth visiting…
I gave the body of a poor waitress a push, and it swayed. It was about five years or so before Kale’s rebellion. She hung upside down, her pale Ringer body made even whiter from being drained of blood. Serial killers were rare as natural-growing trees in my time, with all the surveillance and my people’s obsession with safety and survival post-meteorite.
This one had a penchant for hanging pretty women up by the feet in Decontamination Chambers, stripping them, and slitting their wrists. The Stalactite Killer, or so the newsfeeds called him, had murdered four Earther immigrants by then, leading Director Sodervall to believe he was a terrorist, but the Ringer body swinging before me proved my hunch—this was indeed a killer targeting women, regardless of where they were from.
Why? I wasn’t sure yet. The man didn’t leave any clues, no sexual deviance, not even a sign of struggle on the women’s bodies over how he got them there. And the women? Besides each having two X chromosomes, they had nothing in common, from their jobs to their appearances to their personal lives. Maybe they gave him a bad look one day or were just in the wrong place.
All I knew was that since I’d been summoned to Titan, a body had shown up in a decon chamber every Friday. Didn’t matter how much security I had Pervenio post outside of them either. And if I did too much to impede the local population’s ability to stay clean, my employer would never hear the end of the complaints.
We were between a rock and a cold place, but now that a Ringer wound up dead, the locals would be clamoring for justice even louder.
“Sir, forensics is here,” a security officer said as he peeled away the divider curtain wrapping the decon chamber.
“Give me a minute,” I said.
I circled the body, using my sleeve to lift her limp arms. Back then, I still worked alone. I didn’t need fancy tech and analyzers to find the killer, I just needed to find the pattern. I drew back her hair to get a look at her scalp. Nothing.
I sighed. This killer was good at hiding it, but there was always a pattern. Nobody, not even madmen, murdered over nothing.
“What are you hiding?” I asked as I crouched in front of the woman’s face and stared into her gaping eyes. They were brown with flecks of gold. Her records said she was born in the highest level of the Darien Lowers and worked at an Earther restaurant in the Uppers. Hell of a life she’d missed out on.
I stood and exited the chamber. “All right, let them at it,” I said to the officer just outside. The rest of them stood by the security tape keeping a crowd of angry Ringers at bay. Things were simpler when it was just Earthers dying. Now a hundred pale faces shot daggers my way, as if they didn’t already hate my kind enough. Ringers back then weren’t foolish enough to touch a collector. They used to have respect.
“And, Officer,” I said, “have headquarters forward her records to me. Everything, just like the others.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, saluting. He went to talk with the line of examiners wearing exo-suits who parted the crowd, but I grabbed his shoulder.
“I mean it, everything. I wanna know who her first kiss was.”
I let him carry on, and took one last glance back at the poor woman. Bad stuff happened on Earth, but crazy offworlders kept me far busier. I wondered if maybe it was all the enclosed spaces that drove them madder—that constant dread of their world breaking open and suffocating. Whatever it was, it kept me employed. And the only thing that pissed me off more than bodies of innocent women turning up was me not being able to figure out who did it.
I considered a trip to The Foundry nightclub. Nothing got my head straight like a night of filling it with toxins and clearing it out. But I wasn’t in the mood to drink synthesized swill and party with Ringers, so I took the lift back to the Uppers, to my five-star hotel on the south side of Darien overlooking the statue of Trass. A lifetime of traveling meant I could splurge a little on my temporary homes. The upper floor of the place even had a fresh-water pool and garden.
The lobby bar served fine whiskey imported from a Pervenio distillery on Earth, but I continued on past that as well. Sure, I wanted, no, needed a drink, but seeing that poor woman had Aria on my mind.
My daughter waited in my suite, like always. It got easier sneaking her around as she got older. Public transports or hotels, when she was little, it was like smuggling narcotics, but once her chest and hips started filling in, the owners of places just figured I fancied younger girls. Because what else were illegitimate offworlders good for?
Those days, Aria barely needed me to help forge her IDs or a good backstory anymore. The girl was like a sponge, absorbing everything I’d ever taught her, and worse, all the things I hadn’t.
A keycard opened the door to my room on the hotel’s top floor. “Aria?” I said as I entered. She sat at the edge of the bed and slowly turned toward me, eyes glued open in dismay. She was sixteen or seventeen then—tough to remember when I spent so long making up birthdays to help smuggle her—a real young woman.
The freckles across
her cheeks and nose really stood out at that age. Her neck appeared too long still, and the Ark ship figurine pendant she wore only accentuated it. Red hair tumbled from her head in thick, messy curls. She barely ever took the time to comb it. Her tunic barely fit.
I didn’t mind any of it. It was weird enough men had started looking at her the way I used to stare at her streetwalking mother.
“What’s wrong?” I said. “Have you been watching the news?”
I took one step in, and her eyes grew wider. I knew why even before I felt the barrel of a pulse pistol against the back of my graying hair. I cursed. Aria knew better than to ever let anyone into our rooms, even cleaners. I could see the regret racking her features even more than fear.
“I thought we said to keep the door locked,” I scolded, then exhaled slowly. “Whoever you are, you’re going to want to rethink this.”
“I don’t think so, Malcolm Graves,” a woman replied, her voice soft yet sultry. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “You’re exactly the man I want.” The woman dragged her perfectly manicured, free hand down my side and along my hip, then removed my pulse pistol from its holster.
I tried to keep my anger in check. My pistol had just gotten a brand-new carbon-fiber, fluted barrel that left her light as a feather.
“Words I love hearing,” I said.
“Not from me,” the woman said.
“Whoever you are, let the girl leave, and we can have a nice long discussion about why it isn’t nice to hold a man at gunpoint without a proper introduction.”
“Why? Your daughter doesn’t like to hear about what it is you do?”
My face twisted into a scowl. Aria and I had established many ground rules, but number one among them was that she was never to tell a soul she belonged to me. She could be torn away into USF childcare for potential clan-family placement, I could be fined hundreds of thousands of credits and, worst of all, I could lose my job for keeping her a secret.
Aria didn’t react to my expression in the way I expected. Her brow furrowed in confusion. “I swear, I didn’t,” she whispered, so softly I was mostly reading her lips.
“Please, it’s the nose,” my accoster said. “You grow up here, you get good at knowing who comes from what, and she has you written all over her. Funny, I didn’t see anything about a daughter anywhere in your records.” I felt the pistol slide along my head until the woman walked out in front of me toward Aria.
That was the first time I ever saw Rylah. Now, she was a woman who knew how to dress herself. Her hourglass figure meant she wasn’t a full-on Ringer and her legs... they were long enough to take a vacation on.
“She’s... uh...” I blinked my eyes hard to stop myself from staring. “Adopted. It’s a charity thing. I bring her along, show her the ropes.”
“Groom little collectors for your owner?” Rylah stopped and ran her fingers through the ends of Aria’s hair. My daughter’s cheeks lost their reddish hue. My fists tightened. It wasn’t the first time Aria got crossed up in my line of work, but the people who involved her usually wound up dead.
“It’s okay, dear,” Rylah said to Aria. “I don’t have plans on killing him. I just want to talk.”
“Says the woman with a gun,” I said.
“Just a precaution.” Rylah turned around and flashed me a smile with her ruby-painted lips. I swear, I think my heart skipped a beat. I know men always say that when they meet a pretty woman, but there really was nobody like her. Not even modeling on any ad for makeup projected throughout the solar system. She looked like one of Lucas Mannekin’s creations—perfect from head to toe.
“Aria, why don’t you go downstairs to the bar, order me a drink,” I said, unable to look away from Rylah.
“Dad, I—”Aria began before I interrupted her.
“I’m not asking,” I said. “Go, and try not to let anybody else up.”
She bit her lip, then pushed off the bed and stormed by me. “Another one, Dad?” she growled, no doubt referring to the handful of times around Sol I’d had a few too many drinks, kicked Aria out of our room, and paid for a lady’s time.
“It’s not like that. I don’t even know—”
Aria slammed the door behind her. I’m not surprised she thought what she did. Nobody’s perfect, and my job didn’t afford chances for anything more than fleeting companionship. And considering that I still hadn’t been able to stop staring at Rylah, it added up.
“She’s cute,” Rylah said, smirking.
“Sometimes,” I grumbled.
“If it makes you feel any better, she didn’t let me in when I knocked. Made me hack the controls.”
I blew out through clenched teeth. “Great. I hate owing apologies.”
“Doesn’t every Earther?” she asked.
“Yeah, and whose side are you on?”
“My own.”
“We have that in common,” I said.
“I couldn’t tell by the logo stamped on your shirt.”
“They’ve always treated me like family,” I said, referring to Pervenio Corp.
“I’d be careful saying that around here. Who knows who’s listening.” She skirted her way around the bed and took a seat on the sofa in front of it. Her dress hiked up a bit as she crossed her legs, and I knew she wasn’t just being careless. She now had two guns, but they were the least effective weapons on her.
“What in Trass’ name is this made of?” she said, stroking the arm of the sofa with a single finger. “Everything is so plush up here.”
“Are you going to tell me why a lady such as yourself broke in here or are you going to make me start guessing?”
“The Stalactite Killer,” she said.
“What about him?” I asked.
“Why assume it’s a man?”
“I’ve seen enough in my life to know we’re the baser half.”
She chuckled. “Pervenio must think he’s serious to fly you all the way from Ceres, then. I figured a man with your experience could handle it, but now he’s targeting Ringers.”
Considering my gun lay beside her and hers was across her lap, aiming in my direction but with her finger off the trigger, I made a move toward the minibar. The small bottle of whiskey just inside was exactly what the doctor ordered. A taste of an Earther delicacy.
“I guess that explains whose side you’re on,” I said.
“Like I said, no sides. But the woman you found today worked for me; my eyes and ears on the east side of the Uppers. You may operate alone, but I protect my people.”
“And what is it you do?”
“I learn things about people and places.”
“Information broker. I should have known.” I raised the bottle to my lips and drained it in a single gulp. It burned in the best way going down and left my mouth and nose feeling like I’d just inhaled a bonfire out in the wilderness on Earth.
“The best on Titan,” she said. “You want to catch the killer; so do I. I know every corner of this frozen husk of a moon, from Darien to Ziona. I’ll help you do it, and you don’t need to give me a cut of your pay.”
“Yeah?” I asked as I turned to face her. “And what do you get at of it, because I sure as hell never met an intel peddler who gives a damn about justice.”
“I get a friend in high places, and I don’t tell a soul about his daughter.” She shot me her heart-arresting smile one more time, then tossed me my pistol. “The name’s Rylah.”
It took us a week to solve the case. Turned out the killer was a woman after all. An illegitimate like Aria, fueled by jealousy thanks to an abusive foster mom. Rylah didn’t let me hear the end of it, but I didn’t mind. We’d worked closely, leaning on her sources to catch the killer before he struck again, close enough that afterward, I decided to take my first extended vacation in a long time just to be around her.
Maybe, at first, I was a mark for corporate intel for her, but after a few months and a trip on a luxury cruiser sailing Saturn’s upper atmosphere, me, Aria and Rylah
were inseparable. Then my hand terminal rang, and I was put on the next ship back to Mars to track a smuggler named Elios Sevari. I told Rylah I’d be back, maybe even take some time off the job and be her enforcer. It was the first time in decades I’d considered hanging up my collector pistol.
But New Beijing had other plans for me, as it often did. Aria got mixed up with Elios, same as she did with Kale. I got angry and drove her away for good, and fell back hard into my occupation. Rylah became another lonely, fond memory in a lifetime full of shitty ones.
Every man’s got that one woman who makes his head go screwy. I had her. Even though the last time I saw her, she tried to have me killed and Zhaff shot her to protect me, a part of me couldn’t help but feel she’d come down presently just to make things right.
“As you can see, work is progressing rapidly,” Basaam said, leading her toward the half-finished containment sphere. She froze as her gaze passed across my cell and our eyes met. I grinned a crooked grin and waved with only the tips of my fingers. Before I could say anything, she turned, asked Basaam a question, and they hurried toward his control console.
Maybe Rylah wasn’t about to make some grand apologetic gesture like what might happen in my wildest dreams, but Rylah’s presence left for an intriguing escape plan B if getting to Desmond didn’t work. Somewhere buried in her cold, half-Ringer heart, remained a soft spot for me. I knew it.
Things between us didn’t end on the best terms, but there were good times. And I’d never been one for knowing what’s going on in a girl’s head–Aria was proof enough of that–but what Rylah and I had was real. Sure as the sun is hot, it was. You don’t ignore and run away from old flames you don’t give a shit about.
I stood and approached the bars of my cell to try and get a better look at her, when Rin’s horrifying visage appeared out of nowhere. “Hello, Collector,” she said. She wore a wry smile, but the dim lights over the cells only illuminated the half of her face that looked like it’d battled an impulse engine. She and Rylah barely even looked like they were the same species.
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