by K A Riley
“Yes, ma’am,” Brohn says.
“Ma’am?” the woman chuckles. “You really aren’t from around here, are you?”
“Reno?” I ask. “Or Salt Lake City?”
“Earth,” she replies with a snort.
As I stare at her, still wondering what to make of the sarcastic, cigar-smoking, half-helpful, half-nasty stranger, she stands up and leans way over the bar to grab something from the other side. As she stretches over and down, her shirt and her layers of scarves lift up to reveal a large black bird tattooed on her lower back. It’s got its wings spread wide, with a bunch of smaller black birds in various stages of flight behind it.
She heaves herself back up with a grunt, spins around, and slaps a fluorescent blue stick into my hand.
“There it is,” she announces way more loudly than I think someone should who’s helping out virtual strangers who happen to be on the run from secret government agents.
“This is the thermonic sensor cartridge?” I ask, practically in a whisper.
“It’s not a stoup of toxic,” Saucy shouts with a wrinkled nose and a crooked grin full of snark.
“What do we owe you?” Brohn asks, not wanting to look this particular gift horse too carefully in the mouth. He pats the pockets of his pants and vest. “We don’t really have any…”
“She knows,” Saucy says looking at me with a hard stare that looks kind of flirtatious but also slightly deadly. “And I suspect the rest of you do, too.”
Suddenly I remember what Vail told us before we left. “You really…want Render’s DNA?” I ask with a swallow. The thought of it makes me sick.
“Yes. Assuming Render is the raven I’ve been hearing so much about. Don’t look so surprised, girlie! He’s nearly as famous as you are. They may have herded us all into their little cattle camps and destroyed what’s left of our society, but people still find ways to communicate. It’s what separates us humans from idiots and inanimate objects.”
“I just don’t see how Render’s DNA is going to help you—”
“…to save the world?” Saucy lets out a laugh. “You’ve seen what it’s like out there. And hell, you’ve seen what it’s like in here. Broken. All of it. I plan on doing my part to help rebuild it. And DNA, in case you missed this little tidbit during your self-schooling sessions back in your little mountain town, is the building block of life.”
I look from Brohn to Rain, but their expressions are as confused-looking as mine must be. Still, this woman, eccentricities and idiosyncrasies aside, has provided the device and the information we need to get to our final destination. What harm could a little feather do?
I reach into my inside jacket pocket and pull out the long black feather Render let me extract from his chest before we set out for the city. I hand it to Saucy and say a silent prayer that he’s not still irritated with me for the whole plucking process.
Saucy slides the feather under her nose like she’s sampling an expensive cigar. She closes her eyes and inhales before slipping it into a glass test tube she’s taken out of her inside jacket pocket.
Brohn raises an eyebrow and leans forward to ask, “So, are we even?”
“Even as Steven. Steady as Freddy. Listen, Vail tells me you’re trying to catch on with the Insubordinates.”
“Insubordinates?” I ask.
“The San Francisco underground. Holed up like rats in one of the few complete and cultivated cities left in the country. So you’re off to expose the truth, fight the government’s army, take down the evil dictators in charge, bring back our democracy, and save the world? Your basic teenage quest?”
“I’m not sure about all that. We…” Rain starts to say, but Saucy stops her with a raised hand.
“You do anything that helps take down President Krug, and I’ll be happy. If you die along the way—and you’d hardly be the first—then all I’m out is the price of a thermonic sensor cartridge,” she shouts, pointing to the bartender, “which Gus over there lifted for me anyway, so no skin off my nose.”
Gus tips his head at Saucy and goes back to pulling on a lever to fill a huge metal mug of beer for a squinty-eyed man with a beat-up cowboy hat and a blond dreadlocked beard, who’s seated at the other end of the bar.
“Thanks,” Brohn says. “We really appreciate—”
Saucy raises her hand again and blows a contorting cloud of putrid smoke into the air. “Let’s not do the whole gratitude, exchange of pleasantries thing. I’m here because I value an ideal above my personal safety, and I’m hurt enough to want revenge and crazy enough to think I can put something good back into the world. Sound familiar?”
The three of us nod in unison like kittens hypnotized by a dangling bangle.
“Before we go,” I say, shaking off the trance, “your tattoo?”
“Which one? I’ve got twenty-two of them.”
“The one on your back. The birds.”
“The ravens?”
“So, they are ravens.”
“What else would it be?”
“I don’t know. Crows, maybe?”
“My dear Kress,” Saucy says, “a bunch of crows would be a Murder. I’m a business-owner and a facilitator. Occasionally, I’m a pot-stirrer and a thermonic sensor cartridge supplier. But one thing I’m not is a murderer. Besides,” she adds with a knowing wink, “you can’t have a Conspiracy without a shared secret or two.”
Before we have a chance to ask her what she means, she hops to her feet and strides into the crowd, the top of her head bobbing like a beach toy on the water, until she disappears from view through a door on the far side of the room.
“What the hell was that all about?” Rain asks. “What secret? And why does she want Render’s DNA, anyhow?”
I shrug like I don’t know and don’t care, but the truth is, I think I might know, and I very definitely care.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s head out.”
We emerge into the open air from the reeking, noisy, and overcrowded bar. A man whistles at Rain as he passes. “Well aren’t you a pretty little thing?” Ignoring him, we keep walking, leaving the man and all of our recent problems behind.
Or so we think.
20
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a hand latch onto Rain’s shoulder and whip her around.
The hand belongs to the stranger who has a kind face but clearly unkind intentions. Unlike most of the other people we’ve seen here, his teeth are white and straight. He’s even smiling as if he’s a kind uncle about to offer advice to his wayward niece. “When someone pays you a compliment, the polite thing to do is to show your gratitude.”
“We don’t want any trouble,” Brohn says, stepping protectively between Rain and the man.
“Looks like what I want and what you don’t want just aren’t lining up today,” the man says evenly, his smile morphing ominously into a curled-lip sneer. He’s decent-looking with a slim build and overall pleasant features. His clothes and fedora are old but clean. Even his thin tie looks newly ironed. In this small but crowded city of big bravado, random gun violence, mysterious women, and large, menacing men, this guy seems oddly out of place. Like a banker in a bull-fighting ring.
He looks from me to Rain before turning his attention back to Brohn. “Looks like you’re outnumbered. Perhaps you’ll allow me to take one of these lovely young ladies off your hands?” He reaches over and runs his hand down Rain’s straight black hair like he’s sampling material for a new suit.
She rewards him with a straight punch to the face that sends him reeling.
A trickle of blood drips from his nose, and his eyes tear up, but he doesn’t fall down. Instead, he straightens up and lunges right at Rain.
Any pretense of civility has disappeared from his eyes and has been replaced with red fury. He balls up his fist and goes to take a swing at Rain, but Brohn intercepts him with a quick, sharp jab to the jaw. The man staggers, and Brohn cocks his fist, ready to finish him off, but the man is faster and stronger than he loo
ks. In a flash, he’s whipped out a gun from a holster under his jacket. He charges at Brohn, the gun clamped in his hand with his arm fully extended. Startled, Brohn stumbles backward into me. Despite all evidence we’ve seen to the contrary, I’m hoping the gun is for show, just a bluff, but the man squeezes the trigger and a shot whizzes past my ear right between me and Brohn.
The man looks like he might really try to kill us right here in the middle of the sidewalk, only to leave us as more casualties of Reno’s insane vigilante justice.
But just as he’s squeezing the trigger to take a second shot, a black flash whips down out of nowhere, a missile aimed squarely at the shooter’s head.
It’s Render, and he’s in full protective mode. Leading with his sharp talons, he slashes at the man’s face, raking his claws down his cheeks and neck. Startled, the man loses both his hat, and, more importantly, his grip on his gun, which clatters to the uneven wooden planks of the sidewalk. In a flurry of his powerful wings, Render launches himself back into the air, stabbing with his razor-sharp beak as he goes.
With one hand pressed against his eye, blood seeping through his fingers, the man leans down and picks up his gun. Spinning, staggering, and shrieking in agony, he fires wildly into the air.
I scream out to Render, but it turns out I don’t need to worry. The guy doesn’t come anywhere close to hitting him. Render banks steeply to the right and swoops around in the blink of an eye to renew his attack. The man drops his gun again and flails wildly, as Render carves deep red trenches into his foe’s hands and forearms.
Rattled now, the man stumbles back a full ten yards as Render circles around behind him, dragging his claws along the back and sides of the man’s head and neck. The man shrieks. By now a crowd is gathering to watch him drop to his knees, his arms clamped over his head in pain and terror. Blindly, he crawls back toward us, fumbling for his gun, which Rain kicks away. In the same smooth motion, she delivers a punishing strike to the kneeling man’s face with the heel of her hand. This time, there’s no simple trickle of blood. Instead, his nose releases a full-blown river.
Three men, two with beards and one with a face full of buttery-yellow stubble, burst out of the bar. Moving as one, they draw their guns from holsters under their jackets and prepare to fire at Render who, satisfied that the first man is no longer a threat, is streaking into the sky. The three men must be friends with our enemy, because one of them stops to check on his wounds as the other two fire wildly up at Render, who is engaged in a skillful evasive maneuver. This isn’t his first rodeo, and it’s highly unlikely that a couple of half-drunk idiots are going to have any success against him with their pistols.
Still, I’m strongly considering lunging at the two shooters before they can get a bead on their target, when Brohn locks his hand around my upper arm and points down a nearby alleyway just off the main road. “Kress, Render’s fine! But we need to get out of here!”
I nod, and Rain and I race after him as he tears down the alleyway. We’re greeted by a maze of smaller alleys and laneways, all branching off in different directions. Overflowing garbage bins, towers of precariously-stacked wooden skids, and piles of jagged sheet metal line the already-narrow alleys and make it impossible to tell which direction might be the safest.
Two little boys push their heads through the rails of a second-floor balcony just above us.
“Don’t mind us,” one of the boys calls down. “We just want to watch you die!”
This sends both boys into peals of high-pitched laughter, hand-slapping, and shoulder-punching.
“Great,” Brohn says. “Thanks.”
“Forget them,” Rain squeals. “Which way?”
Brohn gestures with his thumb back the way we came. “Any way but that one!”
When I spin back, I immediately see what he means. The three men have apparently given up on shooting Render or helping their bleeding friend and are pursuing us at top speed down the alley. Their trench coats waft out behind them as they sprint toward us. Once they’re close enough, they raise their weapons and start firing.
We duck and scramble away as bullets blast fist-sized holes into the brittle walls around us. Dodging around piles of garbage and scrapped building materials, we bolt down the alley to our left. It leads us to a small, cluttered courtyard, which branches off into three more alleyways. Brohn bolts down the middle lane this time, leading us to a low metal fence, which we clamber over with the three armed men kicking metal garbage bins aside behind us and closing in fast.
The last thing I recall is the crack of bullets filling the air around us. Then the world goes pure white, before fading to a deep, inky black. The walls of the narrow alley go fuzzy and then disappear along with Brohn, Rain, and everything else.
I’m sure I’ve been shot, and now I’m drifting off into a slow, blurry death.
It doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would, but I don’t have time to figure out why as I drift into the nebulous vacuum of unconsciousness.
I don’t know how much time has passed, but when things start to return to focus, I’m greeted by Brohn’s and Rain’s smiling faces. Cardyn and Manthy are just behind them, leaning over their shoulders. I rub my eyes with the heels of my hands as the details of my surroundings continue to take shape.
After a deep breath and a painful squint, I take a long look around: My friends. The smooth concrete floor. The workbenches. The truck that brought us all here.
We’re back in the garage.
“But how…?” I begin to ask.
“I told you I’d keep an eye on you,” Brohn says as he helps me to my feet. I need to lean on him as I look around in a daze.
“Am I dreaming?”
Rain says, “I don’t think so.”
“Then I’m dead?”
Cardyn shakes his head and laughs. “I don’t know what Heaven looks like, but I seriously doubt that it’s a crummy garage in a desert just outside the Reno city limits.”
“How did I, I mean…how did we get here? I don’t remember anything after getting shot.”
“First of all,” Brohn says, “you didn’t get shot. None of us did. Those idiots couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a bazooka.”
“Um, Brohn?” Rain says. I look over to see her eyeing the back of his shirt. “I’m not so sure about that.”
Brohn spins around to reveal that his shirt has a hole in it, precisely the size of a bullet. He yanks it off, only to reveal a pink mark on his skin, no bigger than a pencil eraser.
“You were hit,” I say, stupefied. “But how…?”
Brohn’s fingers are on his lower back, feeling for a wound that doesn’t exist. “I don’t know,” he tells me, his eyes wide with confusion. After a moment he pulls his shirt back on. “It must’ve been something else,” he says dismissively, and I get the distinct impression that he doesn’t want to talk about it. “I suppose I must have caught it on something.”
“As for the rest of it,” Rain tells me, apparently willing to accept Brohn’s flimsy explanation for now, “you can thank Render for saving us.”
“Render?”
“Apparently, he initiated your connection. Your eyes did that weird thing where they turn pure black, and before we knew it, you were ordering us to follow you. Your voice was pretty weird, Kress.”
“Ordering you to…?”
“Military command-style,” Brohn informs me, clearly impressed. “No doubts. No hesitation. You and Render together make an excellent General.”
“You were zigging and zagging through those alleys like you’d lived there all your life,” Rain says. “You led us into a creaky old building, up some stairs, down a hallway, onto the roof, down a fire escape, out an alleyway, past a bunch of soldiers, through the entire town, back to the desert, and right back here to the garage, without a single other shot being fired.”
“I did all that?” My head is swimming as I try to access a memory, to recall any of it. But all I can see is blankness, like a white sheet of p
aper.
“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you hadn’t.”
“And it was Render leading the way?” I ask.
Brohn strokes his chin like he’s deep in thought. “Well,” he says, “unless there’s another magical black bird you know and can connect with, then yes, I’d say it was probably him.”
I rub my temples with my fingertips. My friends are still coming into focus, and I can make out some more of the detail of the garage around us.
The truck is there, of course. Two of its big side panels are off, exposing a complicated network of filaments and motherboards underneath. It’s also up on jacks, and its two back wheels are off and leaning up against the garage wall. Brohn and Rain hook their hands under my arms and slowly lift me up from the chair where I’ve apparently been slumped for I don’t know how long.
Cardyn says, “Welcome back to the land of the living!” while Manthy walks back over to the truck, quietly wiping her hands on a grease-stained towel.
I glance up at Cardyn and tip my head in Manthy’s direction. “Has she been able to fix whatever was broken on that thing?”
“I think so. She hasn’t exactly been chatty with me while you three were off on your adventure. But she seems to know what she’s doing. Don’t ask me how.”
“And you gave her the thermonic sensor cartridge?”
“Brohn gave it to her. She seems to know what to do with it. Again—”
“I know,” I say with a twisting smile. “Don’t ask you how she did it.”
Cardyn beams at me and somehow manages to throw his arms around me, Brohn, and Rain at the same time in a giant bear-hug. “It was very nice of the three of you to not get killed.”
“It was our pleasure,” I mumble into his chest.
Rain laughs and says she’s going to see if Manthy needs a hand with the truck repairs. Cardyn decides to tag along with her, leaving Brohn and me alone in front of one of the thick-legged wooden work benches.
My head is still a bit cloudy, and I must look woozy, because Brohn drags a chair over and encourages me to sit down.
