by J. N. Chaney
I was pretty certain Alec had been a forensic analyst for the Union at some point but never bothered to ask. He seemed to know more than he let on, but I supposed that was the case for most people in our line of work. Most never told anyone their full story, because too much transparency could get you killed. That was what Pearl had taught Clem and me when we were starting out, and it was a rule we’d since learned to follow.
I sighed, flipping over to the message that Alec had left me. It was in text, not voice.
The text simply read, “CHECK YOUR INBOX!!!!!”
I sighed, popping open my mail application. Sure enough, there were a handful of new files. I was tempted to just leave it for later, but the abundance of exclamation points in the message gave me pause.
Maybe I could just skim these over and go back to sleep. Better than leaving them for later, I supposed.
The doc seemed to be a breakdown of the investigation into the attempt on Sister Mable’s life. The dead guys’ pads had been successfully cracked, their data dumped, and an analysis completed. Their employer appeared to be a man named Elias Hencher, a name I didn’t recognize.
The file said Hencher had a brother who had been killed almost fifteen years ago by our organization. He also had a lot of military contacts, as well as connections with more than a few Renegades in the Deadlands.
He also happened to own a scrapyard on Epsy.
A list in the file laid out all the possible informants based on time of payments made and known associates. Alec was nothing if not thorough in his information digging.
One particular tag caught my eye. There was no name attached. It was for the sale of a ship in decent condition for well below the market price. The buyer appeared to have no name attached but was described as being a young woman with black hair and brown eyes.
Strange but not uncommon. She might be a Renegade or some other kind of smuggler or bounty hunter. There were plenty of people who made their way in the world anonymously, using fake names to avoid attention.
Hell, I was one of them.
I switched back over to the first file, skimming the information quickly before reaching the video feed that caught the previously referenced woman leaving the scrapyard. I played the video. The figure in question was only on camera for about two seconds. Even so, it was enough.
The woman was between 160 and 170 centimeters tall. Lean build and dressed in familiar clothes. Her long black hair had been tied up in a rigid bun behind her head.
I only caught the side of her face, but I still recognized her easily. I knew the build.
“Clementine,” I whispered. “Gods, it can’t be.”
Was this the place she’d found her ship? Of all the people in the galaxy, why had it been this man? The same crook who’d hired that team to kill Sister Mable. This couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?
I turned over to the bed beside my own, expecting to see her there, but to my surprise, she was already gone.
18
Clem’s empty bed wasn’t an admission of guilt, but it seemed suspicious after the video I just watched. She might have only gone to the bathroom or to the kitchen for a midnight snack, but I couldn’t shake the nauseous feeling in my stomach.
If her motives for wandering around the complex in the middle of the night were innocent, so be it. When I found her, I would say that I was still adjusting to recently arriving from another system and couldn’t sleep. She’d understand.
The door opened with a soft hiss, and I peeked around the corners. The hallway was empty, lit only by the dim overhead bulbs.
I kept my eyes peeled as I made my way to the bathroom. She wasn’t inside, which troubled me, but I still needed to check the kitchen before I let my fears run rampant. Truth be told, I didn’t know Clem as well as I’d hoped. She’d been gone for over a year now, which was more than enough time for someone to change. I’d assumed she’d grown into a better person since I last saw her, but the opposite was just as likely, wasn’t it? After all, I certainly wasn’t the same, not when I really thought about it.
Despite trying to give my sister the benefit of the doubt, I was moving stealthily through the halls like I did when infiltrating a target’s home.
Several grim scenarios tumbled through my head. Maybe her story about coming to visit me was just to gain access to the complex. We hadn’t spoken since our falling out. Why would she want to reconcile now?
If she wasn’t here to see me, why was she here? Maybe she wanted to kill me, but if that were the case, she would have done it already. Her possible ties to Elias Hencher could mean she was hired after the others botched the job. The timestamps on the feed certainly matched the timeline.
But Mable was the closest thing to a mother we’d ever had—except maybe Pearl—so why would she go after the old nun? Was this really just about getting some money for a ship?
The kitchen was abandoned as well. Panic started building in my chest. I didn’t want to believe Clem came back here to hurt anyone, but as I searched for her, old memories about previous jobs we did together resurfaced. I remembered her brutality, and the sheer joy she took in murder. I had no idea what kind of violence was still inside her now after all our time apart.
Alec certainly seemed to think she was a threat. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have sent me the intel. That case wasn’t something I was actively working on, so he must have known Clem was here today. Which meant he realized the danger and saw fit to warn me. No doubt, Alec sent Mulberry the exact same information, but I had to assume he was still asleep. The only reason I had seen it when I did was because I awoke in the middle of the night.
If Clem infiltrated the complex to learn Mable’s whereabouts, it stood to reason we had an emergency on our hands. I needed to alert Mulberry. Thankfully, his quarters were only a short walk from here.
As I moved faster through the hall, I spotted something out of the corner of my eye. I almost missed it, thanks to the dim evening lighting.
Down the adjacent hallway, a leg stuck out of a doorway. As I neared it, my chest contracted as the sight of a dead body took me by total surprise.
I already knew who it was. The dark, wavy hair was a dead giveaway. Alonso had a stab wound through the temple of his head.
That wasn’t all. There were seven additional stab wounds throughout his torso, mostly in his stomach, but a couple in the chest.
I closed my eyes as I stood up again. I couldn’t deny who was responsible for this. Nausea gripped my stomach, a deep quivering in my gut that just wouldn’t let go.
“Gods, Clem,” I whispered, trying to keep my panic from turning into full-blown hysteria. I had to stay focused if I wanted to stop her from hurting anyone else.
In the adjacent room, Bart had four stab wounds in his back. He was probably nearby when Clem attacked Alonso and he ran away, either out of fear or to call for help. She’d caught up to him, taken him down, and finished him off by slashing his throat. These poor fools never stood a chance.
I’d never liked either of them, but seeing them dead was something else. It didn’t make me feel better about what they’d done to us when we were kids. It didn’t bring any satisfaction. It was just empty and wrong, and at this moment, I felt it.
Clem had tracked some of Bart’s blood on the floor, making it easier to follow her path. She’d gone in the direction of Mulberry’s room, the same as me. I thought about using my comm but remembered I’d left it in my dresser drawer, and I wanted to curse myself. I was so stupid.
I also hadn’t brought my gun. Perhaps that was because I knew Clem would never hurt me. She could have done that when I was asleep, but instead, she’d simply left me there alone. Still, I’d let my emotions and confusion get the best of me, and I’d slipped up. It was too late to go back to my room at this point. I’d have to hurry to Mulberry.
A man’s scream erupted from down the corridor.
“Godsdammit,” I snapped, breaking into a sprint.
Everything was quiet now. Th
e only sound was my heart pounding in my ears and my bare feet pattering over the floor. The trail of Bart’s blood had faded, but I wasn’t looking for it anymore. I was looking for another victim.
Whose body would I find?
A crack of light caught my eyes, coming from a distant door. This one wasn’t in the hall but across another room. I knew that was where Galion slept, and I was drawn to go and look.
As I eased the door open, Clem’s old knife-fighting instructor rested on his stomach. He was a smaller man, but he was a killer, born and bred. Clem had sliced a small yet deep cut in his lower back, right around the kidney.
Despite the surprise attack, he’d reacted in time to grab his own knife that he was still clutching in his right hand, and it had blood on it. It wasn’t much, so I wasn’t sure how effective his strike had been, but Clem was nowhere to be found. She likely hadn’t slowed much.
Unlike Alonso and Bart, Galion’s death had been quick. That much was evident. There was no hatred in it, nothing torturous in his execution. It had been precise and immediate. Almost respectful.
I paused before leaving, clenching my jaw as I took the blade out of his lifeless fingers. It felt wrong to take this from him, but I had no other choice.
My eyes ran up the rest of the hallway. A few red drops lay in the center of the corridor. Sloppy work for her, but she had to know that already. Maybe she didn’t care.
The sounds of a struggle from down the hall made me pick up my pace. I was sprinting by the time I skidded to a halt at Mulberry’s door.
I paused. The door was usually closed, but it hung open now with a trail of blood leading through it.
I clenched my jaw and gripped the knife tighter in my hand before stepping in closer. I heard Mulberry’s recognizable growl, but breathless and in pain.
“It’s over, old man,” said Clementine. “Sorry to do it like this, but I need to find that woman.”
Mulberry coughed before answering, “Well, you’d best kill me now, girl, because I’m not telling you shit.”
My body tensed as I rounded the corner and looked into the room. Clementine stood over Mulberry, facing away from the door with a pair of bloody daggers in her hands. Mulberry was on the floor in front of her, propped up on one hand while the other covered a wound in his stomach. Blood seeped through his fingers.
Clementine laughed. “You’d sound a lot more intimidating if you weren’t on the ground bleeding to death.”
Clementine’s eyes held their familiar manic look. Her lips curled up in a sneer, and her nose flared with quickened, frantic breaths.
She looked like a predator about to go in for the kill.
“Clem, stop!” I yelled without meaning to. All my training told me to be quiet, take her by surprise, but this was different.
I wanted to talk in an attempt to stop her, not kill her. Give her a chance to fix it and make it like it was before.
She turned around, her crazed look locking on to me. She was no longer standing over a fresh kill but facing a threat.
“Please stop,” I whispered.
Her eyes shifted from mine to the knife in my hands, and she circled around to Mulberry, placing her blade at his throat.
“Drop it,” she growled, scurrying behind him and holding his neck.
I reached out a hand. “Please—”
“I said, drop it!” She pressed the knife deeper, splitting Mulberry’s skin. A line of blood ran along his neck and into his shirt.
My knife clattered to the floor. Mulberry narrowed his eyes at the knife before relaxing in Clem’s grip.
The sight of him like this shook me more than I expected. He’d always been so strong and full of vigor, never one to submit to anyone. Ever since I’d met him all those years ago, back when Sister Mable dropped us off, I had thought of him as unstoppable. Seeing him so helpless as Clem threatened his life numbed me inside.
“What are you doing here, Abby?” she asked, eerily calmer than before, almost like she was a different person.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Abby,” Mulberry cut in. “Get out of here. Get help. Find Pearl and—”
Clementine cut him off with a hard punch to his head. “Shut up!” she screamed. “Can’t you see that I’m having a conversation with my sister?”
He gritted his teeth. The wound in his belly had bled through his shirt, so much that I could tell it was serious. She’d done that deliberately, no doubt to get information from him, but he’d bleed out if we didn’t do something soon.
I circled around, keeping my distance as I slowly moved towards the fireplace.
Clem looked back at me, immediately relaxed. “What were we talking about?”
“You were explaining just what in the hell is going on,” I said, keeping my voice low and even like I was trying to soothe a wild animal. “I’d really like to understand why you’ve come all the way here to do this, turning over our home—”
“Your home,” she interrupted. “This place was never mine. Not really.”
“—and why you’re killing the man that took us in,” I finished without pausing at her interruption.
“Don’t you get it?” she asked, scoffing. “You said it yourself, remember? You said you wanted to leave with me and get away from this place. We were never meant to live in a place like this, doing whatever this old fool told us.”
“He gave us a home when no one else would. He fed us, taught us how to survive, and loved us. Look at him, Clem. That man you’re killing is the closest thing to a father you or I have ever had, but you’re just going to—”
She shook her head furiously. “No, no, no! Fuck him! He doesn’t care about us! Don’t you remember what happened with Alonso and Bart? This bastard let it happen. They were going to—” She paused, swallowing. “He didn’t kick them out. He didn’t send them away. He just put them on some extra kitchen work and that was it! He’s not a father to anyone, Abby. Fathers don’t betray. They protect!”
“But he has protected us!” I pleaded. “Every step of the way, he’s tried his best to help. You’ve just blinded yourself from it. You’ve—”
She laughed. “Says the girl who hasn’t seen real pain. You don’t know anything, Abigail. I made sure you didn’t have to suffer through anything. Don’t you remember? I looked after you! Me! Not him!” She clenched Mulberry by the hair, staring down at him with wide, terrible eyes, and then she shook her head. “All that matters is our dream, Abby. Don’t you want to leave with me and be free of this? We could get our own ship, and all we’d have to do is kill a few more people.”
“A few more people?” I echoed, taken aback by the absurdity of such a statement. “You’re talking about the only good people we’ve ever known! Mable and Mulberry never did anything to you. You’ve twisted everything in your head so you can blame them both, but the truth is, they were the only people who ever tried to help us. You could have saved your money by staying here with me. You didn’t have to leave. You didn’t have to do what you’re doing right now!”
“Murder is murder!” she yelled. “You think you’re better than me because this old man tells you that you’re going after bad people? We’re all bad people, Abby. Look at us!”
Mulberry was barely conscious. His eyelids were drooping halfway. Any second now, he was going to pass out.
Noticing my concerns, Clementine scoffed and shook her head. “He’s fine. I didn’t hit anything vital.” She yanked his hair, forcing him back awake. “Isn’t that right, you old crook? Hm?”
As Clem’s gaze left me, I moved toward the fireplace’s tool stand right beside me holding a brush, a dustpan, a pick, and a poker.
Clem looked at me again after nudging Mulberry back into a state of semi-consciousness. “Look, I’m sure this isn’t exactly how you imagined our reunion. Neither did I really, but it’s how it has to be. We’re here, so let’s make the best of it. Help me finish this job so we can get our ship and be free of all of this.”
; “Killing Mulberry and Mable shouldn’t be part of that plan, Clem. You had your own career going. You could’ve done whatever you wanted.”
She pointed at Mulberry with her knife. “Did you really think this bastard would just let me run around on my own without his supervision? They would have sent someone after me eventually. Possibly even you, thinking that I wouldn’t kill you. I’m just taking action before it gets to that point. If I can score a ship in the process, why should I turn that down?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said sharply. “Mable walked away. He let her go, even though he loved her, even though she could have betrayed him later. He still did it, because Mulberry is a good and decent man. He would have done the same for us.”
She laughed, sounding frantic. “You’re so delusional, Abby. I know what they’re about. Mulberry and Sister Mable were busy in their early days. You think what I do is bad? They did a hell of a lot worse.” She glared down at him. “That’s right. I know all about your sordid little past. I know what you’ve done.”
I sighed, my shoulders sagging. “So this is what you want,” I said quietly.
“Look, Abby, step back and think. Killing Mulberry is just a means to an end for me, but consider what we stand to gain. We’ll have access to all the organization’s assets. All their contacts, money, and even this complex. We can sell it or use the network for ourselves.” She shrugged. “All we have to do is kill everyone here.”
“Put the knives down, Clem,” I said, forcing the resistance out and focusing on what I had to do. “Or I’ll make you.”
“Don’t make jokes, Abby. It doesn’t suit you,” she said, rolling her eyes.
I grabbed the poker in the stand, holding it like a sword. It was still warm from the fire.
Clem chuckled. “You know I love you, Abby, but in what universe do you think you’d ever be able to hurt me?”
I gritted my teeth. “I’ll do whatever it takes to snap you out of this delusion.”
