by Joel Ross
“Chess!” Hazel snapped. “He recognized you? What if he’d told the roof-troopers?”
“I—I didn’t think—”
“What if they followed us home to Mrs. E? I know how you feel about your eye, but—”
“You don’t know!” I snapped back, my face flaming. “You don’t.”
Her jaw clenched. “Having Fog in your eye doesn’t mean you can lie to us.”
“It means I spend every minute lying. That’s all I ever do—I pretend I’m normal. My whole life is one big lie.”
“Not to us!”
I glared at her. “I’ve got a billion machines in my brain, and . . . and Kodoc customized me, like Bea fixing an engine. No, like Bea building a weapon. You don’t know what it’s like, Hazel. He made me. He created me.”
“So did your mom, and your dad, and Mrs. E.” Hazel returned my glare for a second, then sort of smiled. “And all of us.”
I ducked my head. “I guess.”
“We’re crew,” Hazel said. “You don’t need to keep secrets from us.”
My anger faded. “Sorry. I was . . . scared.”
“Course you were,” Swedish grunted. “I would’ve done the same.”
I blinked at him. “You would?”
“Me too,” Bea said. “Everyone would be scared of that.” She peered at Hazel. “Well, almost everyone.”
In a girly voice, Swedish said, “My name is Hazel, and I’m soooo brave.”
“I eat roof-troopers for breakfast!” Bea chimed in as she did a gawky version of one of Hazel’s ballerina spins. “And I dance with mutineers!”
“Oh, shut your valves,” Hazel grumbled. “Anyway. I told you to keep quiet at the slipway, Bea, because you started saying that we can’t salvage the raft.”
“We can’t! My poor raft is in a thousand pieces!”
“And if the bosses know that, they’ll make us pay,” Hazel said. “Or they’ll ditch us into the Fog as an example.”
Bea’s forehead wrinkled. “So we have to give them the diamond?”
“But they don’t know we can’t fix the raft,” I told Bea as I realized. “That’s what Hazel was doing—buying us time.”
“Time for what?” Swedish asked.
“For something sneaky,” I said.
Hazel tucked a few braids behind her ear. “Forget the raft and forget the bosses. We’re giving the diamond straight to a coyote, as payment for smuggling us to the Port.”
My heart skipped a beat. “And we’re not paying the bosses for crashing their raft?”
“That’s right,” she said.
Swedish whistled in awe. “You want to cheat the bosses?”
“Whoa,” I said a little shakily. Nobody messed with the bosses—not if they wanted to live.
“It’s the only way.” Hazel exhaled. “Kodoc knows about Chess. We’re running out of time.”
“Are we . . .” Bea bit her lower lip. “Are we ready?”
“No,” Hazel told her. “But this is it, honeybee. Either we cheat the bosses or we’re finished.”
The clockwork engines in the workshop ticked and tocked until I broke the silence, “Well, I’m not standing around picking my nose until Mrs. E dies. Let’s do it.”
“I’m in,” Bea said, her eyes shining. “Port Oro, here we come!”
“We’re going to regret this,” Swedish grumbled. “When the bosses find out, they’ll ditch us into the Fog. This is a stupid move. A huge mistake.”
Nobody said anything.
“But,” he continued, “you’re my crew. Whatever huge mistakes we make, we make together.”
“Always,” Hazel said, her eyes clearer than any diamond. “Okay, first we’ll talk to some coyotes I know, then we’ll—”
A bell chimed faintly from above.
“That’s Mrs. E!” Bea squealed, and scrambled up the rope ladder.
Hazel glanced at the ceiling, smiling. “I guess what we’ll do,” she said, “is plan our escape later.”
19
I WAS THE LIGHTEST sleeper, so I bedded down near the front door, ready to raise the alarm if anything woke me. Swedish slept in the main room—the only place he could stretch in the morning without knocking holes in the ceiling. Hazel and Bea shared a lumpy acrylicloth mattress in a nook behind a beaded curtain. And Mrs. E had the only real room, a cramped space behind a door made of rusted traffic signs, the floor heaped with mildewed notebooks and smudged charts and my father’s scrapbook on a special shelf against the wall.
I followed Bea into the room and found Mrs. E curled in bed, toying with the bell she’d rung.
When she’d first found me in the alleys, she’d seemed like a force of nature, striding along with her chin high and her spine straight. But now she was bent and wizened, with clouded eyes and clawed fingers. Still, she looked better than usual. At least she was awake.
“Hey, Mrs. E!” Bea chirped. “Do you need something?”
“How very kind of you to ask,” Mrs. E told Bea in an almost girlish voice. “I want ices. Raspberry ices.”
“Ices?” Bea repeated, the happiness draining from her face. “You mean, um—”
Mrs. E gasped. “You’re not my governess!”
I wanted to cry at the confusion on Mrs. E’s face. She’d recognized us twenty minutes earlier, but now she thought she was a child again, living in the upper slopes, surrounded by servants and sweets.
Bea hung her head. “I’ll get her, ma’am.”
“Why did she call me ma’am?” Mrs. E asked me, her fear fading into a pout. “You’re the gardener’s boy, aren’t you? Would you like a glass of lemonade?”
I backed toward the door. I didn’t know what to say, and I couldn’t stand seeing her like this, so feeble and confused.
“My grandpapa says he once drank real lemonade as a child. He says his grandfather was alive when the Fog started rising. Just a fine dew on the ground, in the lowest places. Then it started rising an inch every week, then a foot. . . .” She widened her cloudy eyes at Hazel when she entered. “Where is that coachman? You promised me a ride in the camel cart.”
“Not in this snow,” Hazel said, her voice calm, even though I knew how much she hated playing along with the sickness. “I’ll read you a story, instead.”
“Read me one about the Fog!” Mrs. E grabbed a weathered notebook from the floor. “My favorite! Gasiform Nanites and White Blood Cells: An Analogy.”
Hazel grimaced. She read better than Swedish or me—Bea was still learning—but Mrs. E’s technical notebooks were beyond her. So instead of reading, she sat on the bed and spoke in low, soothing tones.
I squared my shoulders and started collecting the dirty laundry while Swedish stood in the doorway, blinking away tears.
Hours later, I snuggled into my threadbare blanket on the floor, thinking about the dive, the diamond, and Hazel’s desperate plan. We’d have to sell the ring to the coyotes without the bosses catching us, leave the Rooftop without Kodoc catching us, and then sneak into Port Oro without the mutineers catching us.
We sure were counting on a whole lot of people not catching us.
Getting there sounded impossible, but I still daydreamed about our new lives on Port Oro. Maybe we’d work as a shuttle crew. Maybe we’d buy a fishing airship. Or maybe, knowing Hazel, we’d join the mutineers ourselves. And of course we’d find a cure for Mrs. E.
Bare feet padded closer, then Hazel plopped down beside me.
“Can’t sleep?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “You?”
I shook my head. “My mind’s racing like a thopper.”
“Worried about selling the diamond?”
“That and, y’know, saving Mrs E.”
“And avoiding Kodoc,” she said. “But no pressure.”
I smiled, then asked the question I’d been wondering about. “The bosses hear everything that happens in the slum. How can we hire a coyote without them finding out?”
“Carefully,” she said.
I shot her a loo
k. “Oh, good, thanks. Now I feel much better.”
“I’ve been talking to coyotes for months, Chess. As long as nothing cockeyed happens, we’re in good shape.”
“You’re telling me about cockeyed?”
She smiled at first; then two little lines appeared between her eyebrows. “Actually, I’m worried about everything.” She looked toward where Swedish and Bea were sleeping. “What if something happens to one of them? To one of you.”
I nudged her with my elbow. Sometimes I felt sorry for Hazel, like we all depended on her too much. She worried more about us than herself.
“To one of us,” I corrected her.
“I know,” she said, swallowing. “But I worry most about losing Bea.”
“It’d be like losing our hearts.” I said.
“Yeah.”
“If we lost you,” I told her, “it’d be like losing our dreams. And if we lost Swedish, it’d be like losing our—”
“Goalie,” she said, and we laughed softly. “No,” she said. “He’s our anchor. He keeps us grounded.”
“Yeah.”
Hazel rested her head on my shoulder. “Our heart, our dreams, our anchor. . . . Do you know what you are?”
“Our killer instinct?” I asked. “Our deadly warrior?”
She raised her eyebrow at me and thumped my arm. “Our hope,” she said.
We sat in silence, listening to the distant fans whirr. After a while, Hazel said, “On the raft today, at the slipway?”
“Mm?”
“You threw that mooring strap, cut the line, and ran up the deck in two seconds.”
“Well,” I explained, “I was in a rush.”
She smiled. “I’ve never seen you move that fast.”
“I move a lot faster than that in the Fog.”
Hazel stopped smiling. “Nobody else does.”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Well, I’m a frea—”
“Different,” she interrupted. “And you weren’t in the Fog when you cut the mooring line, Chess. What if the nanites are changing you? What if you’re getting sick?”
“Fogsickness doesn’t make you faster.”
“You’re not like everyone else.”
“Yeah, I’m not just a freak, I’m an experiment.”
“You’re mostly a garbo.”
“At least I don’t look like a startled porcupine,” I said, remembering Bea’s twisty of an angry Hazel.
She gave me a shove. “Let me see your eye.”
For most of my life, accidentally revealing my eye meant a beating, so the idea of showing it on purpose made me a little sick. But this was Hazel; she checked my eye after every long dive, to make sure it wasn’t getting worse.
I wiped my hair off my forehead and she examined me. I watched her for signs of disgust but didn’t see any. I never had, not from her.
“Bea’s right,” she finally said.
“It looks like a muddy puddle?”
“Like white clouds in a dark sky. It’s kind of beautiful.”
“Yeah, I’m gorgeous.”
“You’re scruffy as an old boot. But your eye is cool. Almost hypnotic.”
“You’re getting sleepy . . . ,” I said in a dopey voice.
She laughed—a little. “At least it looks the same as always. I’m probably worrying for no reason.”
“You always worry that I’m getting sick,” I told her. “Now you’re worrying that I’m not?”
She chewed on her lower lip. “Nobody spends that much time in the Fog and stays healthy, Chess.”
“Don’t be so impatient,” I said, pretending to scold her. “Give me a few years.”
“It’s not funny. I have nightmares about you getting fogsick, but it’s almost as scary that you haven’t.”
I tugged my hair over my eye. “I guess I must have an affinity.”
“Mrs. E says the nanites won’t protect you forever.”
“It doesn’t matter. Once you talk to a coyote, we’re out of here. I won’t need to dive after we get to the Port . . . as long as nothing cockeyed happens.”
“Yeah,” she said, but she still looked worried.
20
I WOKE TO THE scuffle of footsteps outside the shack.
They didn’t sound like the sewer worker down the alley or the family with the rust stall. No, they sounded quick, purposeful, and dangerous. Like a gang closing in.
My pulse spiked, and I rolled to the side and threw a bootball at Swedish, who was snoring in the main room. He snorted awake. Without a word, I crawled behind the crate shelves, grabbed the lever that operated the trapdoor, and waited.
Whispers sounded from the main room, and the beaded curtain rattled. I stayed hidden, my back to the wall, as the footsteps outside scuffed closer.
How many of them were there? Five? Ten? Did they know about my eye? Had Kodoc sent them to grab me? Was this the end?
I couldn’t do anything except take a shaky breath and try not to cry. So I did both as I watched Swedish grab a shovel and Hazel reach for Mrs. E’s rapier. I squeezed the lever tight. The gang would burst inside, then stop at the sight of Swedish. If Hazel couldn’t convince them to leave, I’d open the trapdoor beneath them.
At least, that was the plan.
Instead, I felt the prick of a knife in my back. Someone had cut a hole in the chickenwire-and-plastic wall and crept inside to wait for me.
“Hands off the lever,” a girl whispered in my ear. “Don’t yell! You’ll scare Perry and he’ll start breaking things.”
“Loretta?” I gasped, recognizing the voice.
Loretta was a gang girl Swedish had a crush on. She was short and stocky, with spiky black hair and a tattooed face. Swede liked her gap-toothed smile, narrow eyes, and fearlessness. Hazel claimed she liked him back, but I’d never seen any sign of it. And her knife in my back wasn’t exactly winning me over.
“Bosses’ orders,” she murmured, almost apologetic. “We ain’t killing you, though. Well, as long as you don’t open that trap.”
My hand dropped from the lever. “What do they want? They sent Perry? He’s the worst kneebreaker they’ve got—”
“Wake-wakey, bottom-feeders,” a shrill voice called from outside. “And open this door!”
Hazel lowered her rapier. “Perry? Is that you?” She sounded scared, like she thought they’d come for me. “What do you want?”
Perry didn’t answer. Instead, two thuds sounded. The door shuddered, then snapped from the hinges and crashed to the floor.
When I shifted closer to the lever, Loretta tapped me harder with her knife. I ignored her. I wasn’t the bravest guy in the world, but you didn’t need courage to protect your family. I’d open that trapdoor in a second if the thugs attacked, despite the fear bubbling up in my stomach.
Perry stomped inside, a pale creep with a lot of yellow hair. He worked for his uncle, one of the bosses who ran the junkyard for Kodoc, as an enforcer. Rumor was he’d ditched his own parents into the Fog, that he showed no mercy and felt no pain. His voice sounded like a five-year-old’s, but he still scared the goggles off me.
“When I knock, you run to open your door,” he squeaked at Hazel. “My uncle owns everything from here to the Spew, including your nasty little shack.”
She narrowed her eyes. “That’s why we pay him rent.”
“Shut it, Hazel, or I’ll break more than your door.”
He glared as if daring her to speak, but she just lifted her chin and remained silent. I knew how scared she was, but she managed to look completely unafraid.
“I’ve got a message from the bosses,” he said as two thugs stepped beside him.
My breath caught in my throat. A message? So they weren’t here for me? Did that mean the bosses knew about the diamond?
“Pay up,” Perry continued.
The shack tilted around me. They did know about the diamond!
“Give me your raft rent,” Perry sneered. “Right now.”
The shack stopped tilting. Wait
a second. They only wanted raft rent? So they didn’t know about the diamond! And they didn’t know about me. I would’ve slumped in relief if I hadn’t had a knife in my ribs.
“Rent’s not due for five days, Perry,” Hazel said. “And, um, you probably haven’t heard. Our raft crashed.”
“It’s not your raft,” he squeaked. “It’s our raft. And of course I heard, that’s why we’re collecting early, as penalty for losing the raft.”
“It’s not lost. We’re salvaging it. We’ll be back on the Fog in no time.”
“You ain’t fixing that raft. Not even your geargirl can raise the dead.”
“We’ll see.” Hazel smoothed her kimono. “In five days, we’ll—”
“You don’t get it.” Perry kicked the basket of plastic bags. “You think you’re so clever, but you don’t know nothing. We’ve had orders from Lord Kodoc himself.”
Hazel frowned. “From . . . from Kodoc?”
“That’s right, you should look scared,” Perry told her. “His lordship’s hunting for some deformed kid in the junkyard.”
“A what? Why? What kind of deformed kid?”
Perry shrugged. “They ain’t told us yet. All you need to know is that my uncle’s raising money for the search. That’s why you’re handing over your raft rent right now.”
“We don’t—”
“Hey!” Perry interrupted, his eyes narrowing. “You’ve got a deformed kid in your crew.”
My heart stopped.
“I—what?” Hazel said.
“Yeah, your geargirl.” Perry laughed scornfully. “All those freckles. Now get me that money, or we’ll tear down the walls and stomp the roof flat as a cockroach.”
Swedish grunted. “Cockroaches aren’t flat.”
“They are after you stomp ’em,” Perry said in his high-pitched voice. His thugs laughed cruelly. “Draw your swords, boys, maybe we’ll stick a few holes in the bootball player first.”
Loretta stiffened behind me, but her knife stayed steady.
“Wait!” Hazel said. “Look around. We don’t have anything worth taking.”
“How about in that workshop?” Perry stomped a few times. “Under the floor? I’m betting you’ve got a hidey-hole down there with some valuables.”
“We’re not hiding anything—” Swedish started.
