by R. M. Olson
“Are you hurt?” Lev’s voice was a studied calm, but there was that damn concern under his tone that always seemed to make her stomach twist, and she couldn’t deal with this right now, not after what she’d said to him, even though she’d been right, she’d had to say it, and—
“Jez! Are you alright?” His tone was sharper now, and she blinked and looked up, and he was looking at her, and damn it to hell. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth.
“Jez.” It was Tae this time.
She opened her eyes and took another deep breath, trying to grin. “Don’t worry, we’re fine. Right Tanya?”
She glanced over, but Tanya and Ysbel were looking at each other and seemed hardly aware of anything else in the room.
“Ysbel,” Tanya said quietly. “I’m alright. Jez and I are alright. Olya?”
Ysbel nodded, her movements tense. “I don’t think she likes to be tied up, though.”
Tanya gave her a slight smile. “I’ll see what I can do. I don’t think they were careful with these ropes. Olya, my heart?”
“I can help, mamochka,” said the girl, her face pale and frightened, but her voice still managing its usual tinge of slight superiority.
Tanya smiled at her fondly. “I am certain you can.” She crossed over to where Ysbel was sitting beside the children. Jez turned her attention back to Tae and Ivan and damn Lev. She looked them over quickly. There were no obvious injuries, but she knew the mafia well enough to know that that didn’t mean anything.
“You three alright?” she asked, trying to keep the gut-deep fear out of her voice.
“We’re alright,” said Lev. He was still looking at her, damn it, but she didn’t look away, because hell, they were probably going to all die in a few hours anyways. “They came and got us right after I told you to get out. They all had heat guns, and they jammed the coms so Ysbel wasn’t able to warn us. So—” he gave a one-shouldered shrug. “On the bright side, however, it meant that none of us were injured, because we didn’t have a chance to fight.” He gave a slight shake of his head. “The government ships in the hanger bay have all been sabotaged, we discovered that when Tae was pulling up the vid feeds. So that means no way off the ship. And when they brought us on here, they sealed the blast doors in front of the airlock between the ships. Even if we could get out, we have no way back to the Ungovernable. ”
For some reason, that last sentence was what finally made this whole damn thing real.
They were trapped. They were going to die. And she couldn’t even get back to her ship.
She clenched her teeth hard to bite back the unreasonable tears.
“Jez,” said Tanya from behind her, and she felt the ropes on her wrist tighten, then abruptly drop free. She pulled her hands out from behind her back and shook her wrists, trying to get the blood flow back into her fingers.
Tanya knelt down beside Ivan, and Olya was crouched beside Lev, and a few moments later, they were all free.
“I don’t think they were too worried about us getting our hands out,” said Tanya, straightening and stretching. “That would have taken me much more time if they’d been trying.”
Lev stood as well, pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment, then shook his head. “Well,” he said, faint, dry humour in his voice. “At the very least, as they said, Ysbel made the explosive that’s going to kill us, so it won’t actually hurt—we’ll be vaporized before we possibly have a chance to feel anything.”
“Where’s Masha?” said Jez, glancing around.
“I—don’t know,” said Tae, and there was something in his voice that made her turn to look at him.
She frowned. “What’s the matter, tech-head?”
“We—haven’t seen Masha for some time,” said Lev quietly. “She might be dead. Or—” he paused. “She might be with Grigory.”
It took Jez a moment for what he was saying to sink in. “Wait,” she said, glaring at him. “You think Masha sold us out?”
“I—hope not,” he said quietly. “But—”
Something cold settled into her stomach.
“Look, genius,” she snapped finally. “I know she’s a damn bastard, but she wouldn’t sell us out. She could have done it a hundred times, right? And she never has.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Jez. I’d rather not think about it either. But—” he shrugged. “She never has. Yet. But then, she’s never had what she wanted sitting right in her hands, either.”
Jez was still glaring at him, but she couldn’t stop the unease crawling up her back.
But—she pictured the look on Masha’s face, when they’d broken into that lab in the university. The first time in her damn life she’d realized that Masha was an actual person. That what happened to street kids and poor kids and the people who the government thought were basically expendable actually mattered to her.
When Jez had stupidly blurted out how her family had thrown her out when she was a kid, given Masha a knife to cut her open with—and Masha had tried, clumsily, to patch her up instead.
She shook her head stubbornly. “Sorry, genius. I don’t believe it.”
He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, then gave her a small smile. “I hope you’re right,” he said at last. There was something tense and tired behind his eyes, but he was still smiling, that gentle smile, like he was trying, very hard, to make sure she didn’t hurt.
She took a long breath and turned away.
“Well,” said Ysbel at last, “there’s always the third option. If Jez is right, maybe Masha is going to walk through that door in a minute or two with the key.” She gave Tanya a faint smile. “Right, my love?”
“Well,” said Tanya softly, “I didn’t ever believe that you would walk through the door of that prison. So I would say that anything is possible.”
There was a click from behind them, and all of them turned. Jez reflexively kicked the loose ropes under the bed in the centre of the room and shoved her hands behind her as the door swung open.
A figure entered, and for a moment she thought maybe she was dreaming, maybe Ysbel’s words had got lodged in her head and she was so out of her mind with all the crap happening with Lev that she was just standing here in the middle of the floor dreaming with her eyes open.
Because Masha was standing in the entrance, that same bland smile on her face that she always wore, that same air of slightly-rumpled competence.
And then she noticed that Masha’s hands were tied behind her back, and that there was someone behind her, and that the someone carried a heat pistol.
“Go on,” the man said, and he shoved Masha forward, and she stumbled, slightly, and the door swung shut behind her, the lock clicking into place.
For a long moment, no one spoke.
“Well,” said Masha at last. “This is slightly smaller than our rooms on Grigory’s ship, but not unacceptable.”
“What happened to you?” asked Ysbel, standing up quickly, and Jez noticed, suddenly, that Masha was swaying on her feet. She grabbed a chair and shoved it behind the woman, and Masha sank into it. Her face was a few shades greyer than usual.
“I’m fine,” she said, but her voice shook slightly.
Tanya was already unfastening the ropes binding her hands, and when she was done, Masha brought her arms around in front of her and began to rub the feeling back into her fingers absently.
“What happened?” asked Tae, who’d crossed over to her as well, and was crouching in front of her. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m—fine. At least at the moment,” she said, with a wan smile. “I believe they just wanted me to understand that Grigory was unhappy, but they managed to break open my injury from the university. Unpleasant, but not fatal.”
Her pilot’s coat was closed over her shirt, so there was no way of seeing, but Ysbel took one side of it. “May I?” she asked gruffly, and Masha gave an exhausted nod. Ysbel pulled the coat back to reveal Masha’s shirt stained bright red with blood.
“I’ll be fine,�
�� said Masha again, and this time the exhaustion bled through into her voice. “I—don’t believe there’s enough time to bleed to death at any rate, if I understand the situation correctly.”
“What happened?” asked Tae again, a worried frown on his face, concern in his tone.
Masha lifted her head. “Well,” she said at last, “it appears that I gambled and lost. I suppose I ought to take lessons from our pilot.” She pushed herself upright, wincing slightly.
“I realized they’d caught on that you were doing something,” she continued quietly. “I thought that perhaps if I were to keep Grigory occupied, he might not notice until you could hide your trail. However—” She gave a slight shrug. “It appears I misjudged.”
Lev looked at her and gave her a faint smile. “Well,” he said, “I’m glad you didn’t betray us, at least.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Indeed.”
There were a few moments’ silence.
Tae sat back against the wall and pulled up his holoscreen, typing rapidly, and for a moment, Jez had a flutter of hope. But from the scowl on his face and the tension in his posture, he wasn’t getting very far.
His scowl deepened. He typed something else, waited, then tried again. Then he slumped back against the wall. “They’ve put a lock in,” he said, his voice heavy with despair. “Zhenya must have told Grigory what I can do. They’ve put in a specialty lock, set to our com frequencies. I can get through to the video and sound feeds, but everything else is shut off. We’re completely blocked out. I—” he let out a helpless breath. “I can’t hack us out of this one. I’m sorry.”
“Any other ideas?” asked Lev, looking around.
“I thought you were the one with the ideas,” Ysbel grumbled, but Jez noticed that she’d sat back down on the bed beside Tanya and the children and pulled Misko into her arms, stroking his hair gently.
“Unfortunately,” said Lev quietly, “I don’t have any ideas this time.” He paused. “I suppose we wait.”
Masha leaned back and closed her eyes, and from the strain in her face, Jez wasn’t sure if she was resting, or if she’d passed out.
Didn’t really matter, in the end, she supposed.
She took a deep breath and crossed over to where the others were sitting, and after a moment’s hesitation, sank down beside Lev. If she was going to damn well be blown up, she may as well do it with the rest of the crew.
With him.
Lev turned his head and smiled at her, and she smiled back, a lump forming in her throat.
Not a bad way to die, she supposed, if you had to die.
His eyes were gentle, and there was a soft look in his face, and despite the fact that she usually went for people who looked like they could probably kill her, she’d always been a bit of a sucker for that soft look he had.
On the bright side, looked like she hadn’t had time to ruin his life after all. So there was that, she supposed.
“Tae?” asked Ivan. “Are you hooked into the video feed in the casino?”
Tae nodded.
“Could you—would you mind pulling up the holoscreen?” He gave a small smile. “I suppose I haven’t been almost killed as much as you all have. I’d—rather watch. I’d rather know when to be expecting it.”
Tae nodded again without speaking, and pulled up his holoscreen, expanding it.
Jez glanced at it, but then, she hadn’t really been paying attention when they’d talked about which of the damn plaguers were Grigory’s people and which were the ones he was planning on blowing up, so it didn’t really help.
She glanced over at Lev again.
He was watching her, and he had that faint, wry smile on his face, and she closed her eyes for a moment, because just a few minutes before you were about to be blown into damn space dust wasn’t really the time for your stomach to tighten and something to catch in your throat when the plaguer you’d broken up with gave you that damn smile.
But when she opened her eyes, he was still watching her, and she found she’d moved towards him, just a little, was leaning into him. And he’d leaned into her just a little as well, and there really wasn’t very much space in between them at all, and for some reason all she could think about was two days ago, how it had felt when he held her, and OK, she’d broken up with him right after that, and then spent the next twelve hours crying in her damn room, but—
But there was something warm in the pit of her stomach at the memory, and—well, and hell, they were all going to die anyways. Wasn’t like she could freak out and take off now, first, because there wouldn’t be time for that, and second, because they happened to be locked up together in a damn room.
And he seemed to be having similar thoughts, because he lifted his hand, and hesitated for just a moment, and then brushed a stray strand of hair out of her face, and her whole body went basically completely boneless at his touch. And he ran his fingers gently through her hair, and then down her jaw, cupping her face in his hand, and he didn’t take his eyes off her the whole time, and she could feel her entire body shaking, and she wasn’t sure if it was because of Lev’s touch, or because in just a few minutes she’d lose him forever, him, and Tae, and Ysbel and Tanya and the kids, and Masha, sit here with them as the world turned white and loud and every one of them died, and—
She couldn’t. She couldn’t let that happen, because—well, because she loved them.
She loved him.
He had leaned towards her, and hell, it hardly mattered now, she leaned in as well, lips parting slightly.
Honestly, might as well—
She stopped abruptly. “Wait.”
He paused as well, frowning. “Jez?”
“Genius. Listen to me.” Her voice was shaking, from his touch and from excitement. “You know what I bet would screw with Grigory’s plans? Like, even more than me and Tanya and Olya messing up his gambling rankings?”
He frowned at her.
She leaned shakily back against the wall, a grin spreading across her face. “Figure setting off a damn fire alarm might do it.”
He blinked, then shook his head. “Tae can’t hack us into the system, remember?”
She shrugged. “Don’t need to hack into the system to set off the fire alarm. All we have to do is start a fire.”
He was still staring. She pushed herself to her feet and strode over to Tae. “Hey, tech head. Pull up the camera by our table.”
He gave her an odd look, but did as she asked. She squinted at the screen.
“There,” she said, pointing. “Zoom in.”
Her heart was beating a little faster now, anticipation bubbling in her veins.
She’d been right, she was almost certain, she’d noticed it in the back of her brain when her hip bumped the table on their way out of the gambling hall—
“There!”
Tae looked at the small button-sized cylinder, half-hidden where it had rolled into the artificial vine, then back at her.
Lev was staring too, and there was a look of dawning comprehension on his face.
Tanya came over, peering over Jez’s shoulder. “That’s—” she began.
“One of Ysbel’s explosives you were carrying in your pocket,” Jez finished. “Bumped it off the table on accident while they were dragging us away.” She turned. “Tanya? Don’t have a controller for that, do you?”
Tanya smiled slowly, and cast a quick glance over her shoulder at her wife. “Ysi always said to shove the controller into your cuff,” she said. “They don’t search there, usually.” She gave the sleeve of her jacket a sharp tug, and something small and electronic dropped out into her hand.
Ysbel grinned at her.
“Wait,” said Lev slowly. “We set off the fire alarm, OK. That causes mass chaos—people will be running and panicking, and there’s no way Grigory gets them into position. That’s a temporary solution. But he’ll know exactly who’s responsible for this, and five minutes later, we’re all dead.”
Jez was grinning even wider.
“Yeah, well, that’s the best part of this whole thing,” she said. “See, Tae can’t hack us through the lock. But if they open it for us themselves—”
Lev shook his head in slow disbelief. “I—think that might actually work,” he murmured. He straightened and looked around quickly. “Alright. Tanya sets off the alarm. The rest of us get ready.” He turned. “Ysbel? Tanya? I assume you can locate where on the ship they’ve placed the explosive that is supposed to kill us?”
Ysbel gave a faint smile. “I created that explosive. If you can give me specs for the ship, I can tell you exactly where they’ve put it.”
“Excellent. Then the rest of us will keep the mafia boyeviki busy, and you and Tanya will get out and do whatever you need to do to disarm the explosive. Grigory is resourceful, and it won’t take long to find where the smoke is coming from and put out the fire. He’ll almost certainly get the panic on the casino deck sorted out eventually, but if the bomb is disarmed, we’ll have a chance. He won’t take the risk of his boyeviki shooting down the bureaucrats and ministers with their heat guns. There has to be plausible deniability if he wants to avoid a full-out war, something he can at least spin to look like a tragic accident. And I’ve seen his finances—he’s not ready for a war, not right now. He’s smart enough to wait and try at a better time.”
“And when he finds the people he sent after us never came back?” asked Ysbel.
Lev gave her a tight smile. “I suppose we’ll solve that problem when it arises,” he said. “I assume it will take some time in the chaos. And by then, we’ll be free, and the bomb will be disarmed, and there will be hundreds of witnesses. I’m not a gambler, but I like those odds better than the ones we’re facing right now.”
“Well, you do have a point,” said Ysbel philosophically.
Jez gave Lev a wink. “You’re starting to sound almost like me, genius,” she said, and the momentary look of faint horror that flickered across his expression was actually quite gratifying.
She couldn’t stop grinning, even with the tension twisting in her stomach.
