by Kit Rocha
“Brat.” He flicked the switch beside the door, plunging the room into darkness. Six looped her arm through his, trusting his night vision as office door creaked open.
The hallway beyond was almost as dark, with only the softest glow coming through the oval window in the door that led to the main bar. To the left, stairs headed up to their living quarters on the second floor, but Bren guided her to the right.
Her eyes adjusted slowly, revealing the outlines of the framed posters lining the wall. Their collection of pre-Flare music memorabilia had spilled out of the main floor now that Riff and Scarlet had time to work their black-market contacts. The bar had a comfortable, lived-in sort of feel now. Still rough around the edges, but a place where you could relax with a drink and enjoy some music.
A place where you could escape.
The swinging door to the bar’s main area squeaked open, but Bren froze before walking through, his body going rigid and unmoving. A moment later, Six heard it--the scuffle of footsteps in the darkness beyond.
So much for escape. Someone was fucking robbing them.
Her fingers brushed the knife strapped to her thigh, but Bren reached back and stilled her hand. Then he stepped into the bar, moving quickly and silently.
Six kept her hand on her knife, but used the other to catch the swinging door before it closed all the way. The scuffle of footsteps stilled, kicking her heart toward her throat, and she slipped through the door and felt along the inside of the wall for the light panel. Her fingers encountered the bank of switches, and she flattened her palm and swiped them all on at once.
Light blared from every corner of the room--behind the bar, the stage, the booths around the perimeter. And in the center of the floor--
At first, all Six could see was the gun.
The muzzle was all of eight inches from Bren’s forehead. He stood in the middle of the cleared space that served as a dance floor, staring down the panicking kid as if he didn’t have a gun pointed shakily at his brain.
“Well,” Bren murmured. “This is awkward.”
The barrel of the gun wavered. Six held her breath as she followed it to the hand holding it--too small, tense, the thin finger poised to squeeze the trigger. One wrong move, one wrong word, and the kid would shoot. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself.
She studied his face, trying to place him. Dirt smudged his features, which were lean and sharp with hunger. Shaggy brown hair hung over his forehead, almost obscuring dark eyes that flicked back and forth between Six and Bren in a desperate attempt to watch them both.
Then his face hardened, and he tightened his grip. “Get me all the credits you have on hand, or I’ll shoot him.”
Bren didn’t even blink. “It’s only what’s already in the register for tomorrow.”
He swung his attention back to Bren, his face pinched with hopelessness. “I don’t care,” he snarled, and through her rage at the kid for endangering Bren, Six felt a swift, sharp stab of empathy.
She used to be this kid. Her gut hollowed out with hunger, her life hanging on the next petty theft she managed to pull off. Too small and weak to take down a score that would buy her some breathing room. Never really sleeping because even on the nights when her belly was full, resting too soundly was a good way to wake up in the back of some trafficker’s truck--or never wake up at all.
“All right.” Bren tipped his head toward the scarred bar that lined one edge of the room. “She’ll get it--on one condition.”
The boy’s eyes tightened with suspicion. “What?”
“While she’s getting your money, you and I have a conversation.” His gaze fixed on the muzzle hovering near his forehead. “Nothing weird. And you can keep the gun.”
After a tense moment, the kid nodded. “Whatever. Just get the credits.”
Six took a slow step, both hands raised. When she drew even with Bren, she chanced a glance at his face--relaxed, easy but alert. He knew how dangerous the situation was, but he also knew who ultimately held the power.
The kid was stupid. He didn’t even try to move to keep covering both of them--probably thought keeping his gun on the big scary looking man was the smart play. Six turned to lift the part of the counter that granted access to the bar and hesitated, judging the distance to the kid’s back.
Not far. She could probably have the gun out of his hand before he realized he shouldn’t have let a hostage cross behind him just because she had tits.
But Bren’s eyes tightened just a little, a quiet signal she acknowledged with a nod before hoisting the counter up and slipping behind the bar. She ignored the shotgun under the counter for the same reason, using her code on the register to pop open the drawer.
There wasn’t much in it--a few credit sticks, and some of the paper money popular in the sectors. As Six started emptying it into the canvas money sack she kept under the counter, Bren resumed his quiet conversation.
“Plenty of food in the kitchen, but you’re after money. What’s it for?” He tilted his head. “You got friends who need to eat, too?”
The kid’s face shut down with heartbreaking swiftness, and Six felt a familiar lurch in her belly. She knew what the kid was going to say before the words left his mouth. “That’s none of your fucking business.”
“That sounds like a yes to me.” Bren paused. “What happens to them when someone gets the drop on you and you don’t come home?”
Young as he was, their thief was old enough to feel protective--and to understand loyalty. “Why do you give a shit anyway?” he demanded.
“That’s none of your fucking business,” Bren countered. “Let’s just say that, a long time ago, someone had a conversation with me. But that’s a story I only tell my friends.”
Six had heard it. She’d even met the man who had changed Bren’s life--a grizzled old veteran named Coop who still lived inside Eden, saving street kids and offering them whatever they’d take from him--sometimes a new home, sometimes food and shelter, sometimes just enough to get through the night.
But before you could help a street kid, you had to get them to trust you. And Six knew better than anyone how hard it was to trust help that didn’t come with a clear price tag.
She closed the register with a click that made the kid’s shoulders twitch. “I’m coming back around with the money,” she said evenly. “Try not to shoot anyone by mistake.”
“Just shut up and do it.”
“Hey,” Bren snapped. “She’s doing exactly what you asked. Don’t be a shit.”
Six bit her lip to hold back a groan as she ducked back under the counter. Gun pointed at his head? No big deal. Someone giving her a little backtalk? Now Bren got irritable. “It’s fine, Bren.”
“No, it’s not. The armed robbery is understandable. But the attitude is unnecessary.”
Laughter fluttered in Six’s chest, but died abruptly when the gun wavered before steadying to point at Bren’s face again. “Man, you are fucking insane,” the kid snapped.
“Or I want you to think I am.” While the kid was still processing those words, Bren reached out. His hands flashed as he thumped the butt of the pistol, knocking it up and out of the kid’s grip. It arced through the air as his finger slipped out of the trigger guard, and Bren caught it. “But you better hope I’m not, because now I have your gun.”
Of course he tried to bolt. He lunged without looking and almost ran straight into Six, who caught him by the back of his too-big sweatshirt and hauled him back around to face Bren. “Here,” she said, distracting him by smacking him in the chest with the pouch of credits.
The thief’s hands came up on instinct, curling around the treasure in baffled silence.
“You want this back?” Bren dropped the magazine from the pistol and worked the slide, popping free the chambered round that proved the kid had meant business. “You come get it tomorrow. Lunch. Bring your buddies if you want to hear that story of mine.”
Six opened her hand, freeing the boy so abruptly that he totter
ed forward, almost running into Bren. He righted himself without losing his grip on the bag of credits and spun to bolt for the door.
“Hold up.”
The kid froze.
“You owe the lady an apology before you go.”
The words he muttered weren’t all understandable, but Six made out something close to sorry and waved a hand at him. “Get out of here.”
She didn’t have to say it again. He bolted for the door, leaving it hanging open behind him. The night air spilled in, chilly enough to make her shiver in her short sleeves as she moved to close it and slid the deadbolt into place. “I wasn’t really worried about his bad manners, Bren. He could have put a bullet in you out of sheer fucking nervousness.”
Bren snorted. “You make it sound like I would have let him. I haven’t gone that soft, baby.”
She turned and let herself exhale--maybe fully for the first time since they’d heard the footsteps. Bren was a few steps away, and for a moment she just looked at him. His tough, muscled body. His rough, angular features--the square jaw and the nose that had been broken too many times. He was battered and scarred and still hard, even though the war was behind them.
Bren would probably never get soft. Neither would she. Because both of them could remember being that dumb boy--scared and starving and desperate and, worst of all, helpless.
Didn’t mean she liked it when people waved guns at him. “I know,” she said finally, closing the distance between them. “It just sucks. Someone held a gun on you and I couldn’t even punch their teeth out because it was just some stupid, hungry kid.”
“Come here.” He folded his arms around her, drawing her close to the solid wall of his chest. “We did what we could. The next step is up to him.”
She buried her face against his throat, inhaling the familiar scent of him until it washed away everything else. “I know. It just doesn’t feel like enough.”
“Nothing ever does.” He tipped her face up and smiled. “Your surprise can wait. Let’s get to bed.”
They locked up together, and Six hit the lights, plunging the bar back into darkness. She didn’t know how Bren could navigate the dark hallway so confidently, but she followed him trustingly, resting her hand against the warm skin of his arm as they climbed the stairs.
Their private quarters were secured with a keypad. Bren tapped in the code and the door opened, spilling out soft light. The glow came from the lights in their extremely neglected kitchen, spilling across the steel counter to illuminate their repurposed dining area. The scarred wooden table was covered in their collection of pistols, which they’d been cleaning over takeout the night before.
Definitely more her idea of domestic bliss than screaming babies.
She followed Bren through the door to their bedroom in silence. Not tense or uneasy silence, though--she’d always appreciated that Bren didn’t feel the need to fill every empty space with a torrent of words. As much as she loved Nessa, sometimes it was hard to think around the girl.
Bren gave her space to work through her thoughts as they went through their nightly routine. Six washed her face and braided her hair and tugged on one of Bren’s discarded T-shirts before crawling into bed. Once he’d joined her, she curled into his side and rested her head on his shoulder. “Do you think he’ll come back?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he traced slow, soothing circles on her back through the soft, worn cloth, just above the scars that crisscrossed her skin. Finally, he sighed. “I can’t remember what it was like anymore, being that kid. Wanting something good to be true, but knowing it probably wasn’t.”
“I remember.” Not the kid part, maybe, but it had only been a few years since she’d been just as feral. Just as desperate. “Was it this hard, waiting for me to trust you?”
He laughed, low and husky. Not quite amused, but more like someone reliving a bittersweet memory. “That was different. It hurt because I wanted it so much.”
She spread her fingers wide over his chest. He had a scar three inches to the right of his heart, one she could find in the dark. She touched it softly. “But I learned to trust you. And you learned to trust Coop, back when you were a kid. It’s possible.”
“Anything is. You taught me that.”
“So how do we do this? How do we get all these kids to let us help?”
“We wait ‘em out. Hope they take a chance on us.”
Six ran her fingers down to the inside of his forearm, where the word HOPE was tattooed in elegant script. Most people thought it was some sort of personal reminder, or a sign that crazy Brendan Donnelly was going soft. Six was one of the few who knew its actual meaning.
Her real name.
For most of her life, that name had felt like a cruel joke. Bren was the one who’d taught her what hope felt like--the terror of it and the joy. The taste of it, the heart-pounding exhilaration of it.
If two orphaned street-kids like them could end up ruling a whole damn sector together, anything was possible. She just had to believe in it. And fight for it.
Luckily, she was really good at fighting.
Chapter Two
As dedicated as Six was to rebuilding Sector Three, it couldn’t happen overnight. The most immediate damage--evidence of the recent war with the city--had been smoothed away, but there were deeper scars. Scars that might never heal, no matter how much money and manpower and sheer force of will they funneled into restoring the sector to its former glory.
The vacant lot in front of Bren was proof of those scars. It had once been an apartment building, housing for the foremen and line workers employed by the sector’s largest electronics factory, but the destruction of that factory had rendered it unstable. It had been torn down before it could collapse, its materials scavenged and the lot left to languish.
Except that it hadn’t. No one had rebuilt here, but tables and chairs dotted the busted foundation, and elderly men had gathered to laugh and complain and tell lies and play games, to reclaim this space for their community. It was the kind of stubborn living he’d only seen here in Three, people moving on, moving back in, like ants scurrying about their destroyed hill.
They could get knocked down, but as long as they had breath in their bodies, they’d get back up again.
A man with white hair and a weathered face looked up from the cards he was shuffling and caught sight of Bren. “You better not be here to evict us for your girlfriend’s next project, ‘cause I ain’t in the mood to move my tired bones. She wants me gone, she can come down here and drag me off her own damn self.”
“No evictions,” he promised. “I come bearing gifts.” Five bottles of O’Kane whiskey, to be exact. It wasn’t the best Nessa had socked away--these days, the rarer vintages were reserved for Dallas’s people, no exceptions--but the worst that she turned out was still better than the hooch most people were used to.
He passed out the bottles, which were met with eagerness and pleasure. Only old Charlie continued to eye him with mild suspicion, even as he cradled a bottle in his gnarled fingers. “So. Gifts, or bribes?”
The man beside him grunted. “If he wanted something from you, he could just take it.” Then he looked up at Bren appraisingly. “Unless what he wants is all locked away.”
Locked away inside someone’s head--like knowledge. Bren grinned. “Deal me in?”
“Art, grab him a chair.” Charlie tucked his bottle of whiskey in the large pocket of his beat-up jacket before picking up the cards again. “Buy-in’s fifty credits.”
“C’mon, Charlie.” Art unfolded a rickety metal chair that rocked on the uneven pavement and slapped the back of it in invitation. “You know he’s good for it.”
“Fine,” Charlie grumbled.
Bren ducked his head to hide a smile. “What’s the game?”
“Poker.” Charlie grinned, showing his chipped front tooth and a gold cap. “Omaha rules.”
“Man, who the hell knows Omaha rules?”
A chuckle rose around the tab
le, and Charlie shook his head. “You young’uns need to sort out your priorities. Fine. Five card draw. Can you handle that?”
Bren met his gaze squarely, arched an eyebrow, and tossed a credit stick onto the table.
Charlie gave the deck one final shuffle and began dealing out cards. “So, I hear you got one of those fancy-ass recycling machines from Sector Eight parked over in the western factory district. Haven’t seen one of those in few decades.”
“Not since the firebombs,” Art agreed.
No one in Sector Three remembered the carnage the way these men did. They were community leaders back then, too, on the front lines of every rescue effort in the brutal hours that followed the destruction. But that experience was inextricably tangled up with the pain of what they’d seen, and that made his job tricky. “Six and I figure it’s time,” he said carefully. “People need jobs.”
Charlie continued dealing, the soft whisper and crisp snap of the cards filling the silence. “People don’t remember how to have jobs. You were just a kid when they bombed Three. Your girl probably wasn’t born yet. You don’t even know what you’re trying to do.”
“Scavenging’s a job,” Bren countered. It was part of why the recycling was so important to Six--in a very real way, collecting and selling junk had become the official industry of Sector Three, and the last thing they wanted to do was yank that out from under people.
“It’s a job,” Art agreed. “One where you make your own rules and set your own hours and tell anyone who pisses you off to go fuck themselves. Not saying it’s the best job...but I wouldn’t want to be floor supervisor over a bunch of these kids who don’t know how to take orders.”
“That’s the thing, isn’t it?” Bren arranged his cards. It was a shitty hand, but he’d play it anyway. He wasn’t after money, but another sort of prize. “How are they gonna know how to take orders when no one’s ever taught them?”
“So the rumors are true.” Charlie’s grin had faded into something almost like a grimace, and he glared at Bren over his hand. “You two are gonna rebuild the factories.”
“We’re gonna build whatever works for the sector. Right now, that’s recycling.”
