by Kate MacLeod
“I believed them. For a very long time I believed them. But they kept putting off when I would get to go to space.”
“The war ended years ago,” Scout said.
“I know it. They promised me more—more space on the station and money and anything I could ever want. So I stayed and continued to spy. More than spy. There was little they didn’t already know anymore, so to be valuable, to be worth everything they were offering me, I had to do more.”
“You never saw anything they said they would give you? And yet you still believed them?”
“Once I turned over the first bit of intelligence, I had committed treason. Taking their further deals, a big part of that was because if I didn’t they’d have exposed me. I would be imprisoned.”
“So you kept doing bad things against your own people?”
“I have no people,” Liv said, practically spitting the words out. “Being a spy meant never getting close to anyone. I was barely older than you when I started.”
“Did you give intel that led to the destruction of the cities?” Scout demanded.
“No, never,” Liv said. “I swear. You saw how angry I was with Viola. I would be some kind of hypocrite if I accused her of my own crimes.”
“Yes, you would be,” Scout said.
“What I reported on was largely the movements of the governors. You might not remember, but during wartime their locations were always secret.”
“So the Space Farers wouldn’t drop a rock on a city to take out a leader,” Scout said. She remembered well.
“Rumors were always spread of secret tunnels under the cities, even of an underground train that took them from city to city. All lies. They were never in the cities at all. They stayed in places like this, or newer underground stations on islands just off the coast. Never in the cities.”
“But if you passed that on to the Space Farers, then why did they drop asteroids on the cities? They knew their targets weren’t there.”
“Maybe to flush them out, to demoralize the Planet Dwellers, to destroy our economy. It was wartime; they made war.”
“They were better at it than us,” Scout said.
“The big guns hurt them. More than they let on,” Liv said. “Which is why they decided not to risk another open war now.”
“War isn’t coming?”
“The Planet Dwellers are moving toward it, but the Space Farers see little to gain. If we hoard all the food, they suffer. But if they drop rocks on us until we submit, there’s still no food and they still suffer. They have a different plan.”
“You know their plan?” Scout asked.
“I implemented their plan,” Liv said, the bitterness back in her voice. “Clementine.”
“Clementine,” Scout repeated. “She poisoned Ruth.”
“Yes.”
“But Warrior said that had taken place over a long time. Small doses building up, which was why the rest of us ate the same food as Ruth but were okay.”
“Her target hadn’t just been Ruth,” Liv said.
“The governor. No hiding for him this time. You said you taught her?” Scout asked.
“Not everything. Killing she already knew. I just finished off some of her technical skills. My primary function was teaching her to blend in here.”
“Does she talk?”
“I’ve never heard her do so,” Liv said. “I don’t know why. My higher-ups never said.”
“If her target was the governor, why did she leave with Ruth?”
“I don’t know,” Liv admitted. “I’ve tried a few times to pull her aside and ask, but she’s giving me nothing. Clearly she has a separate script from the one given to me.”
“A separate script from the Space Farers? Or her own agenda?”
“I don’t know,” Liv said. “But there’s one more thing I have to tell you.”
“What?” Scout asked.
Liv jumped, clapping a hand to the side of her neck as if swatting a bug.
Scout lunged forward, pulling her hand away from her neck, but there was nothing to be seen but a tiny red dot. Had it been an insect? She looked into Liv’s eyes and saw what was becoming an all too familiar sight: eyes desperate to communicate while a mouth moved soundlessly.
24
Scout jumped to her feet and ran to the doorway, the dogs charging after her, but there was nothing to be seen. No fleeing figure, no one lurking in the shadows. Had it really been an insect?
Just the thought made Scout’s flesh crawl. Was this place really filled with killer insects too tiny to be seen?
Shadow barked his shrill warning cry and Scout turned back to see Liv pulling herself half out of the hover chair. Her body was starting to spasm much as Viola’s had, but there was a fierceness to her eyes. She likely knew what was happening to her, what poisons Clementine had access to and their effects on the human body. She likely knew just how much time she had left, and despite her claim to be weary and ready to die, she was fighting for every last second of usable time.
She dumped the remains of her dinner on the chopping block and spread the tomato sauce smoothly across the surface. She dragged one shaking finger through the mess and Scout rushed to her side to see what she was writing.
NOT ALONE.
Liv flopped back into her chair, arms now nearly useless as the paralysis spread. Still she managed to grope for something hidden inside her chair. She brought her hand back out but the fist was clenched tight and Liv didn’t seem to be able to force it to relax. Her eyes held Scout’s, but if she was trying to impart some last meaning, Scout didn’t know what it could be.
Then she was gone.
Scout looked at the words in the drying tomato sauce. They weren’t alone. There was Clementine, but clearly that wasn’t what Liv had struggled to convey to her.
Clementine wasn’t alone.
Just how many child assassins trained in space was she trapped here with?
Scout looked at Liv’s clenched hand. Was she going to have to break her fingers to find what she had? Would it even be worth it? Scout folded her hands over Liv’s and found to her relief that she had relaxed in that last moment of life. The fingers parted easily and Scout felt two small disks fall into her palm.
She thrust them into a pocket, then reached into the chair to find the controls to send it out on its own into the common room with the other bodies. She made sure both dogs were with her, then she sealed the hatch.
They could shut off the power if they wanted to. Even the air. There would be enough in here to last her and the dogs a few more days.
Nothing was going to convince her she stood any sort of chance out there against an invisible stinging death.
Of course, she had no way of knowing those things weren’t inside the kitchen with her even now, but if they were, there was nothing she could do about it.
Unless Warrior had something that could detect them?
Scout reached into the pouch for the scratched but otherwise intact lens that had covered Warrior’s left eye. She brought it up to her face. It cut out the brightness of the overhead lights but nothing more. Did it need body modifications to work? Like the power source or whatever in Warrior’s back? She had been holding it a bit away from her face; she tried pressing it right up against her flesh.
It felt like it reached out for her and suctioned itself down over her eye, a startling sensation especially as it left her half blind. She fell back against the chopping block, fighting the urge to claw it back off her face.
Then it lit up, faint green lines outlining a space in front of her like a window. She waited for something more to happen, but that appeared to be it. She looked all around the room, hoping if there were any of the insects inside the lens would detect them. Nothing happened. She didn’t find that comforting.
Scout sat down on the floor, the two dogs once more snuggling in close to her. She found the belt pouch that contained the featureless tablet and set it on her left knee where her lensed left eye could easily focus
on it.
There was a screen on it now, and a keyboard. Just like any other tablet. If she shut her right eye and only looked through the lens, it looked perfectly normal, not at all like the lens was superimposing an image on reality just for her. Weird.
The screen of the tablet had a message on it. She read DEAR GERTRUDE before looking away. That looked personal. Would Warrior want her seeing it? She had certainly never shared her name.
Scout set the tablet down and looked at the other gadgets one by one. Each had information superimposed by the lens, indicators or directions or, in the case of the gun, a number she guessed was the number of shots she had left to fire. Most of it was meaningless, except for the flare monitor. It had a feed coming from someplace, perhaps from one of the Space Farer satellites, measuring current activity outside. As deep into the red zone as ever. A second screen showed the activity down where Scout was. A few particles were getting through even all the dirt and rock and station hull, but not much. Not enough to worry about.
After she had worked her way all around the belt, she took another jolo out of the fridge and popped it open. Then she dug the disks out of her pocket to examine them more closely. They both had the Planet Dweller government logo embossed on one side. They were the sort of disks one used to store data, Scout knew, but she had no device she could use to read them. She picked up Warrior’s tablet again, but it had no input slots. She set it down and went back to turning the disks over and over between her fingers.
Government logo. Government property. Liv had been a spy; was this one last theft of intel destined for her Space Farer masters? But the disks were supposed to be able to hold massive amounts of data. Why would she need two?
Was one of them Ruth’s? She had said she had intel with her that she had been taking to the rebels. Had it fallen into Liv’s hands? Certainly no one else had gone looking for it in those chaotic hours after Ruth’s death. When Scout had gone with Warrior and Ottilie to find Ebba, Liv had been left alone with Clementine, her protégé. She must have gotten it then.
Was there some point when Clementine had stopped working with Liv? It was all so confusing, trying to figure out who was on whose side. Scout put both of the disks back in her pocket and zipped it closed. She had all the intel now. That was all that mattered.
She took another drink of jolo. Her mind was both wired from the caffeine and exhausted, but she didn’t dare sleep. If only she had searched Viola’s medical supplies; she probably had something to keep a person awake that wasn’t so teeth-grinding and heart-pounding as bottle after bottle of pure caffeine.
Scout rubbed at her forehead tiredly, felt the cold surface of the lens against the back of her hand and thought about taking it off again, but then reached for the tablet instead.
She carried Liv’s secrets and Ruth’s secrets, she might as well have Warrior’s secrets too. Or Gertrude’s.
Gertrude Bauer was a galactic marshal, that hadn’t been a lie. Somewhere out there closer to galactic central she had a partner, Liam McGillicuddy. It looked like every time Warrior had been tapping away at this tablet, she had been corresponding with Liam.
Gertrude was technically on vacation. Her superiors knew she was dealing with a family matter and had given her an open-ended leave. But Liam knew she was really chasing down a fugitive, a low-level con artist too insignificant for the marshal service to bother with.
But he had made the mistake of ripping off Gertrude’s grandma. Now Gertrude was going to make him pay.
She and Liam had a warm friendship, their messages back and forth full of references to things Scout didn’t understand like “that one time on Faver 4” or “just like Sonny Solu did back in the day.” She guessed they had been friends a long time.
The last five messages were all from Liam.
THOSE HICKS GIVING YOU HELL, GERT?
UPDATE, GERT?
GERT, WHERE YOU AT?
GERT?
And finally: GERT, I KNOW YOU DON’T WANT ME TO BRING THIS TO SALVO’S ATTENTION, BUT COME ON. YOU CAN’T GO RADIO SILENT THIS LONG. GET BACK TO ME OR I’M SUMMONING THE POSSE.
Scout bit her lip. Should she answer? Pretend to be Gertrude and respond so he wouldn’t panic? Tell him she was gone?
Ask him for help?
Scout touched the screen, opening a window for typing a response, but she still didn’t know what to say.
The caffeine was making her dizzy and her hands were shaking.
Warrior—Gertrude—had promised to take her off the planet. And Scout had seen that Liam already knew all about her. He knew Gertrude was planning to come back with a wide-eyed young thing in tow. Not how Scout would describe herself. Liam seemed convinced that Gertrude was joking. Not the sentimental type, his Gertrude. But if she spoke up, identified herself, explain what happened to Gertrude, would he see his friend’s last wish through?
Scout rubbed at her forehead again. Something tasted weird in her mouth. The last bottle of jolo must have been a bit off. It was older than she was, she was sure.
Then she glanced down at the dogs, one on each side of her, both completely motionless. How long had they been like that? So still.
Too still.
Scout reached out a hand but immediately realized that something was very wrong. She felt more lightheaded than ever, and not in a too-much-caffeine/too-little-food kind of way.
Too late she remembered what Viola had threatened. You want me to vent all the oxygen out of that room?
Shutting off the airflow wasn’t the worst Clementine could do. She could actually pull all the oxygen out of the air. And Scout wouldn’t notice until it was too late.
Scout pushed herself to her feet, vaguely hearing a crash as the tablet fell to the floor. Neither dog stirred, but she couldn’t bother with them now. She stumbled/crawled to the hatch. It had to be just the kitchen Clementine was venting. If it wasn’t, Scout was dead.
Scout’s fingers fumbled at the bolt. She had just gotten it drawn back when everything went black. Lights out again?
A burst of pain at the back of her head told her that she had fallen. Then she knew no more.
25
Scout’s head felt like it was full of sand, and the back of her neck was objecting to the extra weight pulling at it as her head dangled against her chest. Her wrists and ankles itched like mad.
Her hearing was fuzzy at first as she struggled to full wakefulness, but then her ears popped open as if she had just suddenly changed elevation. The murky underwater sounds in her ear were split by high-pitched voices chatting, one shrieking in giggles every few sentences. Scout rolled her head back and forced one eye open, then the other.
Warrior’s lens was gone from her eye.
The lights were still on.
But she was far from alone.
Clementine was sitting cross-legged on top of the island in the kitchen, a slight smile to her lips as she looked down at the two other girls leaning against the counter and chatting up at her and with each other. They looked no older than Clementine. The taller of the two had short, spiky red hair. Not ginger, red like candy. She wore skintight shorts of bright pink and a loose-fitting short-sleeved shirt with such a riot of clashing colors Scout had to look away.
The other girl was smiling and talking as well, but her voice was gentle, almost pleasant. Her long black hair was neatly parted down the middle and plaited into two braids that extended past her shoulders, ending in demure white bows. She was wearing a pleated skirt and a round-collared blouse with a little black bow tie. She looked very clean, all save her white sneakers, which looked like she had competed in a hundred track-and-field events in them. They were worn familiarly around her feet, the leather scuffed and scarred, but the laces bright white and new.
“She’s awake,” the dark-haired girl said, noticing Scout gazing up at the three of them from beneath her brows. She couldn’t quite bring her head up straight, not yet. Had they drugged her?
Clementine looked up at her and smiled.
The redhead turned to look as well. She might have been pretty if dressed and groomed more like the others. If the deep cut that curled up from under her chin to nearly the corner of her mouth hadn’t left a scar. She walked up to stand an arm’s length away from Scout, as if worried she was going to lunge at her. Scout tried to move her hands but then discovered the source of the itching sensation.
They had taken more of the cuffs from the pouch on Warrior’s belt and tied her to one of the chairs. She had been unconscious, surely not struggling, but the cuffs were so tight her hands were turning blue. There was no way she could reach out to try to hurt this girl.
The girl seemed to know it. She grinned as Scout looked down at her own hands and then back up at the girl. She was standing there to make Scout aware of just how powerless she was.
“Clementine tells us you’re Scout,” the girl said. “I’m Beatrice, and that’s Felicity. We’re Clementine’s oldest friends.”
“She told you I’m Scout,” Scout said. Her throat felt raw.
“In her own way, yes,” Beatrice said, tipping her head to look at Scout from a different angle. Scout looked past her to Clementine, still perched on the counter. She could see the hilt of Warrior’s pistol from where the girl had stuck it through her own belt. Warrior’s belt was nowhere to be seen.
Neither were the dogs.
“My dogs,” Scout said, rousting more fully awake. “Shadow, Girl. Where are they?”
Beatrice pulled a completely unconvincing look of sympathy. “I’m sorry. Venting the oxygen from this room was too much for them. I guess you’re on your own now.”
“I can take the blame for that,” Felicity said. She was smearing peanut butter onto cracker rounds but raised a hand as if solemnly swearing she spoke true. “The bit with the oxygen was my idea. You did have the gun, you know.”
“Where are they? Can I see them?”
Beatrice grinned and leaned in to speak directly into Scout’s face. “They’re right behind you. So no, I guess you can’t.”
