Crucible Zero

by Devon Monk

  But I didn’t know them well enough to truly trust them. More than once I’d wondered if any of them would betray us, turn me in for the price on my head, or just turn Abraham and me both in to Slater for other reasons.

  They’d lived three hundred years. I didn’t doubt there had to be some hard feelings among them. I just hoped they all hated Slater the most.

  Abraham appeared relaxed. He rested his elbow on the edge of the window, his blunt fingers propped against his temple. He chewed at the inner corner of his mouth, maybe nervous, maybe bored.

  I decided to take it as nervous, since this plan—what there was of it—hinged on Hollis’s arranging for someone to meet us to get us past the wall and the initial security, so we could take down the surveillance systems and pinpoint Slater.

  It was making me nervous.

  Foster still had the pocket watch. I had spoken to him briefly during the first part of our travel and told him not to destroy it, not to do anything other than carry it until we got inside the city and knew Slater’s location. Then we’d break it, whether it was the key or not, and do our best to break Slater.

  With every minute, the details of the city became clearer and clearer. But we still had a long way left to drive before we were anywhere near the entry gates of the wall.

  My thoughts drifted to Quinten. He would know I was gone by now and had to be furious about it. The note I’d left explained that I was heading on to Coal and Ice with Abraham and Foster. I hadn’t told him that we would be hunting Slater, since I didn’t think leaving behind hard evidence of a murder plot was a good idea.

  But he’d know exactly what my main priority was: stopping Slater, which meant he knew I was coming here to kill him.

  I hoped Gloria was recovering. I hoped Quinten and Neds weren’t doing something dumb, like trying to get to Slater before us. I rolled that over in my head, wondering if my brother—well, this brother of mine—was the sort who would leave his dying love behind and run off half-cocked to try to save me.

  Crap. He just might.

  But they couldn’t travel in the night, so that gave me a six-hour jump on him. If he had set out to Coal and Ice at dawn, he was probably just arriving there. I hoped Oscar wouldn’t let him drive through the night to House Fire.

  Or there was the chance Quinten was still at House Earth, tending Gloria and making more cure for the plague, like he should be. There was a chance he hadn’t found my note.

  I thought there might be enough sensible people there who could talk him into staying: Neds, Gloria, Welton.

  Well, Gloria and Neds were sensible people anyway.

  The day was sliding into evening by the time we joined the line of cars, wagons, and other vehicles waiting to be admitted into the city, the heavy cloud cover tamping out the sun. Oscar had told us to enter through the east gate. He had said there would be someone there to meet us.

  If he was wrong, if Hollis hadn’t found a way around House Fire security, we were rolling toward our own prison.

  Or death.

  The vehicle in front of us was waved through the gate by the guard who wore a uniform of red and orange. We were next.

  Two guards walked up on either side of the car, and Abraham and I rolled down our windows.

  “Identification,” the guard on Abraham’s side asked.

  Abraham pulled a tag Oscar had given us from behind the visor and handed it out the window.

  The guard straightened, studied the tag for what felt like forever. “Wait here.”

  He turned and walked toward a door set into the wall, pulling a walkie-talkie out of his belt.

  There were cameras everywhere. The guard next to my window watched us, his gaze flicking over Foster, Dotty, and January, hand casually resting on the gun he had strapped to his thigh.

  I didn’t say anything, and did my best not to look nervous or like a criminal. Or like a nervous criminal.

  The first guard paused at the door in the wall, and it opened. Vance in the seat behind me softly whispered, “Son of a bitch.”

  Through that door strolled Sallyo, her dark hair pulled back to somehow make the angles of her face even sharper, her snake-slit eyes widened with heavy black eyeliner, her slacks and shirt both the military-cut uniform of burnt red and orange.

  She looked like an official House Fire guard, except for the stripe of black across her shoulder and the deference the other guards paid her. Which meant she was more than a common guard.

  I thought she was a mercenary, not a guard on House Fire’s payroll. Now I had no idea what she was.

  She stopped by Abraham’s window. “Just this car?” she asked.

  “And the one behind us,” Abraham answered.

  He didn’t look surprised to see her. He didn’t sound surprised.

  “It looks like everyone came out to play,” she said. “Isn’t that nice?” She flashed her sharp teeth. “It is so good of you to respond to our invitation. Exit the vehicle and follow me.”

  She moved away from the door, and Abraham rolled up his window. I followed his lead.

  “Tell me you’re not trusting her,” January said from the backseat.

  “I never have,” Abraham said. “But she’s our contact. I don’t have to trust her once she gets us in the city.”

  “Out in the open where everyone will see us?” Vance said, cracking his knuckles. “I hate this.”

  “Oh, you love it,” Dotty said. “Just smile for the cameras and try to look human.”

  “I’d rather shoot her,” Vance said.

  “Don’t fret,” Dotty said. “You might get your chance.”

  We all stepped out of the car, and Abraham signaled for the others behind us to leave their car too. Then we followed Sallyo, beneath the cameras, beneath the curious gazes of at least a hundred people waiting in vehicles or moving about on the streets and sidewalks inside the city near the gate.

  I should feel vulnerable, exposed.

  But walking with half a dozen nearly immortal killers beside me, all of us joined in the mutual task of killing a man who had destroyed our lives and the lives of too many others, and who would only continue destroying lives, made me feel the opposite of exposed.

  I felt powerful with these people. My people. It was my place to fight beside them and for them. In my own way, I was doing a lot more than killing Slater. I was avenging the lives and rights of each of these people who had been forced to be criminals in this world, and slaves in the other.

  It felt right.

  The sky was rapidly losing light as we made our way down a narrow strip of sidewalk, concrete wall on one side, metal chain-link fence on the other, a metal ceiling above us.

  Sallyo strode in the front of us all, like she was leading a damn parade. Six armed guards marched behind us. After three blocks, Sallyo turned and then stopped.

  “I’ll take them to the holding room,” she said to the guards. “You are dismissed.”

  The guards paused. They obviously didn’t think it was a good idea to leave one woman, even if she was a mutant, to try to control all the galvanized in the world.

  “Dismissed,” she commanded.

  The guards saluted, then walked back the way we’d come.

  “It’s real nice of you seeing us in like this,” Dotty said.

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with you, Dot,” Sallyo said. “I’m just doing the job.” She opened the door and stepped inside a room.

  We all walked in after her.

  The room was dark, and my eyes couldn’t adjust to it quickly enough.

  “Fuck,” Buck, behind and to my left, breathed.

  The door slammed behind us and we were plunged in total darkness.

  “Down!” Abraham yelled.

  A body slammed into me—maybe Vance; maybe Buck—and I tumbled to the floor, grunting as I hit
hard.

  Buck swore, probably feeling that fall, since he was touching me.

  The room broke apart into staccato flashes of light and darkness as gunfire filled the room.

  Sallyo had led us right into an ambush.

  “. . . bitch!” Vance yelled over the rattle of guns.

  Dotty, Wila, Vance, and January threw some kind of glow bulbs impervious to bullets that stuck where they landed. Light arced a trail up to the ceiling and the walls, and rolled across the floor, crackling with the pop of electricity snapping to life.

  I was crouched on the floor, behind some kind of storage crate, trying to get my bearings on the room.

  The place was big enough to park fifty cars inside; concrete floor, walls, roof. Metal stairs at the far end led up to a metal walkway that hung over the far wall and halfway out to the walls on either side of us.

  I spotted dozens of soldiers up on that metal walkway, firing down at us. Most of them wore goggles—hopefully, night-vision goggles that were useless now that the room was ablaze in globe light.

  The galvanized were already firing back, weapons they’d kept hidden suddenly in their hands.

  Vance and January rushed the stairs, both of them yelling as Wila, Dotty, and Vance laid down suppressive fire.

  “This way!” Abraham grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet.

  I ran with him. Between one step and the next, a bolt of pain lanced my shoulder.

  I’d been shot. I yelled, then reached for my gun, but didn’t pull it. It was loaded with the Shelley dust, and there was no way in hell I was wasting those bullets on these guards.

  Abraham swore and pushed me ahead of him, twisting to fire as we ran.

  It wasn’t until we were nearly at the far wall that I realized Foster was pounding behind us, covering our escape.

  Abraham opened a door and shoved me through it.

  I stumbled, caught myself.

  Other than square and enclosed, I didn’t have any clue what this empty room was originally intended for.

  Foster slammed the door.

  “Lock it,” Abraham ordered, striding my way.

  Foster spread his feet, then gripped the metal handle in one hand. He twisted, and I could hear the wrenching scream of metal crushing and collapsing in his hand.

  I was a strong girl. And Foster was a frighteningly strong man.

  “Are you all right?” Abraham dropped a clip out of his handgun and slammed a new one into position. He handed me the gun. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Shoulder hurts like hell. I’m fine.” I took a moment to get the heft and feel of the gun.

  He’d already pulled a second from somewhere under his jacket.

  And I’d thought Neds carried a lot of heat.

  “Why didn’t you fire?” he asked, striding across the room to the metal stairs that jagged up to the second story.

  “I filled the bullets with Shelley dust,” I said, climbing behind him.

  He stopped and glanced over his shoulder. “How many?”

  I pushed at his back to make him move. Foster had destroyed the door handle, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t another way into this place.

  “Six.”

  “Good.” He jogged the stairs, and I jogged after him.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” I asked.

  “Should be a control room this way.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was a guard here many years ago.”

  “You could have warned me that we were walking into an ambush.”

  “Didn’t know. Things have changed. This way.”

  His knowledge of the layout was handy. Although I didn’t know why we needed Oscar’s info if Abraham knew his way around.

  Our boots shook the metal breezeway as we jogged to the door at the end.

  “What about the others?” I asked.

  “They’ll take care of the guards.”

  “And Sallyo?”

  Abraham pulled the door open and lifted his handgun, aiming at something inside the room.

  Not something. Someone.

  “Sallyo’s going to put the gun down nice and slow.” He advanced into the room.

  Sallyo stood all the way across the room, which was filled with the hot plastic stink of computers and wires. This was more than just the surveillance room where displays showed various video feeds, though it was that too.

  It was also a computer room.

  Hot damn.

  Sallyo held her hands out to the side, a gun in the left.

  “I’ll put the gun down,” she said, “but you want me on your side, Abraham.”

  “We tried that. You led us into an ambush.”

  She set the gun on the countertop next to her.

  “No,” he said. “Put it on the floor and kick it my way.”

  She rolled her eyes, slowly picked up the gun, bent, and placed it on the floor, then kicked it our way.

  “Is this the kind of equipment you know?” Abraham asked me.

  “It should be.”

  “Go ahead.”

  He kept the barrel of his gun pointed at Sallyo. “Step to your left,” he told her.

  She did so. “I knew you stitched could handle yourselves around a few trigger-happy guards, and it fulfills my contract without blowing my cover. Don’t you want to know who I’m working for?” she asked. “Well, who I was working for?”

  “I do not care,” he said. “Sit in that chair.”

  She sat.

  I was already at the desk in front of a rectangular screen, my fingers flying over a keyboard. Felt just like home.

  “It isn’t Slater,” she said.

  “Hollis?” Abraham guessed.

  “Yes. He never has liked that you all followed his brother and refused to side with him or House Water.”

  “If he weren’t trying to kill us, we might be persuaded to listen to his arguments,” he said. “I’ve told him our terms for helping him fight House Fire. Galvanized will be no man’s army, no man’s slave. Especially not a power-hungry man like Hollis, who wants to topple his power-hungry foe.”

  “You could be. Army, not slaves,” she clarified.

  “We will not be. Not one of us.”

  “Don’t think you speak for all the galvs, Abraham. They haven’t followed your rules and word for hundreds of years. Well, except Foster, and he just doesn’t have enough brains to be anything other than blindly loyal to you.”

  Foster raised his gun, pointed it at Sallyo’s head.

  “No,” Abraham said. “Don’t shoot her. She’s not that important.”

  “I could be,” she practically purred. “I’m always looking to make a new deal. I’ll pave your way to a truce with Hollis and the heads of House Water and Fire. I’ll stand as witness to your character and desire to lay down your killing ways.”

  “Hollis won’t believe a mutant mercenary any more than he believes a stitched,” Abraham said. “I’ve told him our terms.”

  “Clean records and free rein to walk among humans, as if you were human and not a freakish, unkillable monster? Come, now, Abraham. Even you aren’t so naive that you think anyone would be foolish enough to trust the stitched.”

  “I’m not asking for trust,” he said. “I’m asking for the chance to earn it. A chance to not be hunted, shot at, and betrayed. Any luck, Matilda?”

  “The surveillance system isn’t one I’m familiar with. If I trip the wrong thing, we’re going to shut the entire city down.”

  “I don’t see the downside to that.”

  “Slater’s building is electronically locked. If we cut power, he’ll be bunkered in there tighter than a tick. We won’t be able to blast our way in. But if I can find the right file. . . .” I flipped through strings of data, fast, faster.
<
br />   And then one secure file caught my eye. It was an executable program set on a timer, and the timer was already counting down.

  I continued to scan, and set up a password breaker to work on prying open the file.

  “Hollis isn’t the only head of House who wants you dead if you don’t follow his rules, Abraham,” Sallyo said.

  “Mercenaries never follow the rules. And neither do galvanized. Did you get what you wanted out of this?” he asked. “Did you get a guarantee Neds wouldn’t be sent back to the asylum and experimented on?”

  Neds?

  Sallyo was silent a moment. “Who told you?”

  “You did. I saw how you looked at him back at the farm. You walked away from a job, Sallyo. You walked away from bringing Matilda and Quinten in for damn good money. And I am sure Slater was displeased. So you went to Hollis. You went to House Water to secure safety for Neds, didn’t you?”

  “I did what I had to do,” she said, “no matter how foolish.”

  “Love makes fools of us all,” he agreed.

  I glanced up.

  Love? She loved Neds? So I was right. That was why he was so angry with her. He loved her too, but neither of them wanted to admit it.

  She wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes were on Abraham, a self-mocking smile curving her lips.

  “And here we are,” she said, “the fools.”

  The secure file flashed on the screen and opened, spilling out the contents while the timer still counted down.

  “Oh, shit,” I said.

  “Did you find a way in?” Abraham asked.

  “They’ve activated the bomb,” I said. “For House Earth. Slater activated the bomb. And it’s aiming at Compound Five.”

  20

  This is it. One last push. If I can reach you, I can warn you. One last time, one last chance to make this right.

  —Welton Yellow

  “Can you deactivate it?” he asked.

  “It’s counting down. The last bomb was a suicide bomber. I don’t even know if there is a remote trigger.” Even as I said that, I was tearing through the program. Maybe it wasn’t a trigger. Maybe it was a signal sent to tell the bomber to activate the bomb.