The Exodus Towers: The Dire Earth Cycle: Two

by Jason M. Hough

  Voices nearby. Shouting. The door of the feeble shack being kicked in again. Brittle wood shattering this time. Skyler lay still, aware his pursuers argued at the water’s edge, their words a meaningless jumble. They had not fired at him, not with intent to hit him, since leaving the auras behind. The thought flickered in a corner of his mind, then danced away, intangible.

  Adrift, skull throbbing, Skyler felt rather than saw the transition into the swift and churning waters of the wide river. As the light of dawn began to touch the sky above, he lapsed into unconsciousness.

  Darwin, Australia

  1.MAY.2283

  VAUGHN SHIFTED IN his sleep. He rolled away, his moist skin separating from hers in a sound that made her think of peeling a banana.

  One sweaty arm still draped across Samantha’s stomach. She lay on her back, on the floor of her cell, naked and glistening from their roll in the hay. Despite his mirthless personality, Vaughn performed remarkably well for his first time with her. Fit, young, and otherwise bored proved a good mix, if enthusiasm counted for anything. He wouldn’t win any awards for originality, but she didn’t care. He slept now; that’s all that mattered.

  She lay there in the humid air and musky smell until he did not stir when she lifted his wrist from her stomach. On the previous three tries, he’d resisted having his arm moved, despite his regular breathing and rapid eye movement. This time she lifted his arm and dropped it back to her stomach in a wet slap. Satisfied, Sam slid from under him, her skin breaking into goose bumps when his fingertips brushed across her waistline.

  In any other circumstances, you’d make a decent sparring partner, Vaughn, my boy. He’d declined to tell her his first name when she’d finally asked after rolling off him. Something about how they shouldn’t get to know each other too well. “We just fucked,” Sam had replied.

  He’d grunted, considered for a moment, and said, “Fine, it’s Bruce.”

  Sam had never met an actual Australian man named Bruce, but she didn’t press it.

  The tiny window on her cell door cast a square of dim light onto the concrete floor. Sam pulled the guard’s clothing into the beam and went through his gear. A nightstick, Taser, and red utility knife she set by the exit, on top of her discarded clothing.

  In one pocket she found a set of old-fashioned metal keys, the card-swipe system having apparently failed a year earlier, something Vaughn griped about every time he entered. Six silver and bronze keys dangled from the ring. She clasped her fist around them, pulled them from the pocket, and set them carefully next to the other gear, her ears tuned to the sound of his breathing.

  The door squeaked when she slipped out. Not enough to stir the guard, but plenty to send her pulse racing. She left her clothing behind. If Vaughn stirred she thought she could return to his side and raise no suspicion. Now out of the cell, she figured her naked state would give her a brief advantage to anyone coming across her.

  Samantha padded down the hall and poked her head into the office the guards used. In the middle of the night, Vaughn appeared to be the only person on duty.

  She set the nightstick on the desk there and checked all the drawers for proper weapons, a futile effort. One of the keys she’d taken might open a weapons locker somewhere in the building, but a search could take awhile.

  A clipboard on the wall caught her eye. A stack of stained papers was tucked under the metal fastener, rows of names written in one column and numbers in another. Using the weak light coming in from a curtained window, she scanned the names. On page two, she found it: Adelaide, cell listed as “Royal 004.” Samantha’s own name noted cell “Main 212.” The numbers were rooms, she guessed, but the words held no meaning for her.

  “Royal 004,” she whispered to herself over and over. Near the door an idea struck her, and she snatched up a half-empty bottle of some alcohol or another. Fermented cider, Darwin’s poison, if the smell was any indicator.

  Leaving the nightstick behind, she held the bottle loosely in one hand and clutched Vaughn’s keys in the other, and stumbled out the door in what she hoped looked like a drunken swagger.

  Her bare feet splashed in puddles on the cracked sidewalk outside. A half second later a spray of warm rain dappled her bare skin. She paused a moment and closed her eyes, enjoying the feeling of freedom, both physical and metaphorical.

  “We have a dress code within the walls,” someone said.

  She whirled around, slipped, then righted herself. Liquid sloshed in the bottle, a splash of it clapping onto the ground. The clumsy move fed into her ploy. “Thass a new rule!” she barked.

  The man stood between her and a yellow LED bulb mounted on the wall by the guard’s office. How he’d gotten behind her, she had no idea. He wore an overcoat, and had slick hair. Shadows hid his face.

  “True,” he said. “However, a rule is a rule.”

  “Can’t make an exception in my case, sweetheart?” she said, and tried to strike a flattering pose, deliberately off balance.

  “You may be the worst actress I’ve ever seen, Samantha Rinn.”

  She dropped the façade and whipped the bottle around in her hand, holding it like a club. The alcohol poured down her leg in a noisy gurgle. “Who are you?” she asked. “How do you know me?”

  As an answer, he sidestepped into the light.

  “Grillo …,” she said.

  He tilted his head to one side. “It’s been awhile since you declined my job offer.”

  “The bennies were shit,” she said through a tight smile. He’d tried to hire everyone on Skyler’s crew, after Skyler declined to join his operation. He even tried to pay poor Jake to assassinate their leader, claiming an accident. Jake said no, of course, and told Sam about the offer only after a night of hard drinking at Woon’s.

  Her hand tightened around the keys, and she set her feet wider, ready to pounce or run. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I came looking for you,” he replied.

  A pair of laughing Nightcliff regulars came around the corner. At the sight of Samantha they pulled up. One hooted at her nakedness; the other froze in wide-eyed recognition of a captive on the loose.

  “Move along, gentlemen,” Grillo said to them without so much as a glance in their direction.

  “Sir, she’s a prisoner,” the stunned guard said. “Dangerous. Russell said no one was to touch her.”

  “I’m in charge now,” Grillo said. “You may have heard. Miss Rinn is an old friend and is going to accompany me to my office.”

  “She is?”

  “I am?” Samantha said. She draped an arm across her breasts and crossed her legs.

  At some point Grillo had slipped a pistol from his coat pocket, and it now rested against his thigh. Samantha couldn’t decide whom he meant to threaten with it.

  “You,” Grillo said to the guard who still gawked at her, “you’re almost tall enough. Give the young lady your jacket and pants.”

  “Huh?” he managed.

  “Please do not make me repeat myself,” Grillo said. His even voice intoned deadly threat.

  Ten minutes later she found herself seated at Grillo’s desk, the stiff and smelly borrowed jacket itching her skin, too-tight black pants covering her legs.

  She asked for scotch; he gave her water.

  For a time they sat in uncomfortable silence, sipping their drinks. The office was cluttered with mismatched furniture and obnoxious decorations. Blackfield’s things, she surmised. Skimmed from years of impromptu searches of returning scavenger ships. Sam even recognized a painting on the wall as one she’d grabbed in haste in a mansion in China. Abstract and tacky, it nevertheless reminded her of entwined limbs, like some crazed orgy. The same impression hit her now, and the painting seemed even more out of place here than in that party official’s home. Nothing in the room matched Grillo’s personality.

  Lightning flashed outside, followed a few seconds later by distant thunder, as wet season made its curtain call.

  “So you’re runnin
g things now?” she said.

  He considered his words. “Russell needed order in the city, and I’m the man for the job.”

  “How come you were skulking about outside my cell in the middle of the night?”

  “As I said,” Grillo replied, “I was looking for you. You seemed … busy, so I thought I’d wait.”

  “Looking for me, why? The others either want to scrape a knuckle or get in my pants. Sometimes both.”

  “I need your help.”

  “Go fuck yourself. I know how you work, crime lord, and it’s not my style.”

  He frowned, if only for an instant. “I never understood that moniker. Crime, by definition, does not exist in an anarchy.”

  “Slumlord, then.”

  Grillo swirled the water in his cup and watched the vortex that formed for a moment. “It’s integral to my plan for Darwin that the scavenger crews return to full capacity, that they cooperate. My unfortunate rivalry with them over these last five years does not make me the best person to try to convince them of this fact.”

  “But me …”

  “You they love.”

  Sam shook her head. “Forget it. Our independence is, was, the only reason we bother.”

  “Not the greater good?”

  Samantha chuckled. “The only people who ever ask that can’t afford to hire the crews. Look, forget it. I’d rather rot in this place than help you and Russell Dickfield.”

  Grillo leaned to one side and looked toward the door they’d entered through. He raised his voice and said, “Bring her in.”

  The doors opened a second later, and Samantha rose from her chair as two nurses wheeled a stretcher into the office.

  “Kelly Adelaide,” Grillo said.

  Samantha rushed across the room and took her friend’s hand. Kelly didn’t grip back, and Samantha eased, afraid she would crush bone.

  Fighting tears, Sam whirled on Grillo, who now stood near the center of the large office. “What did you bastards do to her?”

  Grillo took a step back, holding his hands up before him. “Let me explain.”

  Without thinking, without a care in the world, Samantha balled her fists and stormed across the room. She threw the punch without a second thought, her calloused, meaty fist whooshing through the air.

  Grillo dodged it. He sidestepped with uncanny agility, his calm expression never changing.

  Momentum threw Samantha off balance and she stumbled forward. The failed attack only fueled her rage. Before she could stop herself, she swiped an arm across Grillo’s desk, scattering papers and sending a comm terminal crashing to the floor.

  “She’s been sedated,” Grillo said.

  Sam gripped the wooden desk, squeezing with all her might to release her anger. Tears threatened to spill from her eyes and she fought to keep them within. “Bollocks,” she managed. “Why?”

  “Because the two of you together are a rather volatile combination,” Grillo said.

  “You think this will convince me? I’ll tear your arms off and shove them up your bloody ass before I help you.”

  Wisely, Grillo moved to stand on the opposite side of the stretcher. By the time Samantha crossed to face him, her sympathy for Kelly quieted the rage within.

  “Here’s your choice, Samantha,” Grillo said, voice low. “Get the crews running, and Kelly lives. Refuse, and her next injection will be drain cleaner. You’ll remain in your cell until Russell finally gets tired of waiting for you to be a willing bedmate.”

  When the white-hot rage faded, Sam saw only Kelly’s serene, vulnerable face. She knelt beside the bed and took her friend’s hand again, a light grip this time. Kelly’s eyes fluttered beneath the eyelids in reaction. “I won’t help you if she’s rotting in a cell alone.”

  “I understand,” Grillo said. “But I can’t have the two of you together, at least until I know where your allegiance is. Sorry, but I know what you’re capable of.”

  “Think of something.”

  Grillo mulled it over for a moment. Then he turned to the two nurses. “Take her to my facility in Lyons, a guest room with a barred window. When she wakes, tell her that if she tries to leave Samantha will be shot.” They nodded and wheeled the woman away.

  For a time Samantha just stared at the empty space where her friend lay. Grillo kept back, respectful of her turmoil.

  “Let me get this straight,” she said when her grief and anger had faded. “I convince the scavenger crews to work for you, and you’ll let Kelly live in your mansion?”

  “Not exactly. Tacit agreement from the airport crews does me little good, and I sense you want more for Kelly than just ‘house arrest’ status.”

  Samantha turned to face him. She towered over the man but somehow felt his equal. The way he’d avoided her fist, the unnerving calm in the way he carried himself. This man demanded respect in a way Russell Blackfield could only dream of. “So,” she said, “what then? Stop being vague.”

  His head tilted to one side as he spoke. “You’ll ask the scavengers to work for you, not me. You keep them flying, you supply their missions based on my needs, and you take responsibility for the success or failure.”

  “What’s the big push? Russell asking for more guns, or does he want fine art and gold chains now that he’s the big boss?”

  Grillo shook his head. “Soil,” he said. “Fertilizer. Shovels, hoes, and spades. Weed killer. Seeds.”

  “I thought the ‘traitors’ took all the farms?”

  A thin smile flashed on Grillo’s face. “I work for Darwin, first and foremost. I intend to change the face of this city.”

  Sam blinked. “I’ll be damned. You’re full of surprises. It sounds like you actually give a shit.”

  “Not the words I’d use, but yes. And thank you.”

  Samantha crossed her arms. “So what about Kelly?”

  “Work for me,” Grillo said, “and you’ll no longer be a prisoner. Kelly will remain under my care, house arrest, until I’m convinced you’re a believer, a partner in the metamorphosis. At that point, when I no longer fear you might flee, I’ll release Miss Adelaide to you.”

  “And Blackfield is on board with all this?”

  That flash of a grin again. “I have broad authority here.”

  This time Samantha grinned. “He doesn’t know, does he?”

  Grillo met her gaze, and allowed his smile to stay this time. “Mr. Blackfield doesn’t know a lot of things, Miss Rinn, and that’s the last we’ll talk about it.”

  Belém, Brazil

  1.MAY.2283

  RADIANT AMOEBA-LIKE SHAPES swam in a sea of molten orange, and any attempt he made to focus on one served only to obscure it further.

  A long time passed before Skyler realized he was looking at the inside of his eyelids.

  A feeble attempt to open them resulted in stabbing pain, so he gave up and focused on the sounds around him: birds overhead, water lapping softly against wood and stone. A distant wind chime tapped out random harmonic chords.

  His lips were dry and cracked. Throat and mouth so dry he couldn’t summon enough saliva to swallow.

  The sun sat directly overhead, it seemed from the heat on his face. He hoisted one arm to block the painful light and felt the world sway. His head pounded, a steady drumbeat from the back of his skull.

  After what felt like an hour, Skyler opened his eyes against the blackness of his arm. Moving one careful millimeter at a time, he lifted his wrist and let his eyes adjust to the blaze of daylight.

  “Don’t move,” a voice said. A girl.

  Skyler let his arm fall. He tried to say something but managed only a weak cough.

  “Sit up.”

  “Don’t move, or sit up?” Skyler croaked.

  When no reply came, he grunted and propped himself on an elbow. A wet tearing sound signaled more pain when his hair, matted with dried blood, detached from the floor of the boat. The drum in his head turned to a marching band, and Skyler ceased moving to let the throbbing pain subside before
finally pushing himself to a sitting position.

  Blinding light forced him to squint. He turned away from it, only to find it in all directions. “Fuck. Enough with the flashlight, eh?”

  No response. Gradually his eyes adjusted and Skyler saw white sand reflecting sunlight up from below. A beach, stretching twenty meters to a row of vacation cottages. Behind the homes he could see the vague forms of skyscrapers against the white sky. Downtown Belém, he hoped.

  The girl stood between him and the cottages. She wore hiking boots and long, dark blue shorts. Tan, toned legs filled the space between. An oversized white T-shirt was stretched tight across her chest by the black straps of a backpack, accentuating small breasts.

  “I know those legs,” Skyler found himself saying.

  She shifted in the sand, and he realized she held a pistol pointed at him.

  “I know that gun, too,” he added.

  “Stand up,” she said.

  He groaned. “Would if I could.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  In answer he turned so she could see the sticky blood coating the back of his head and neck. From her sharp intake of breath, he knew it looked as bad as it felt.

  “What are you doing out here?” she asked.

  “I could ask you the same,” Skyler replied. “Though I’d rather know why you were dancing the other day. Lovely as the performance was, it’s a damn dangerous place for a recital.”

  He saw her face clearly then. Light brown eyes and a little bulb of a nose. Her cheeks were dappled with dark brown freckles that matched the color of her hair, which she’d tucked behind each ear. If not for the suspicious scowl on her face, the worried brow, she’d be rather cute.