“Something will come up,” Wes said. “Want to try our luck at the lines?” It was humbling, but they had to eat.
“Yeah—why not,” Shakes grumped. They walked through the casino, past the food courts, a myriad of treats available but not to the likes of them. Noodle shops, crepe stands, chic cafés serving coffees and tea sandwiches, five-star gourmet restaurants where reservations had to be booked months in advance. There were floor-to-ceiling tanks, brimming with exotic fish domestically farmed in saltwater pools—pick one and they’d slice it into sashimi while you waited.
Another restaurant boasted delicacies beyond imagination. Quail, pheasant, wild boar, everything organic, grass-fed, free-range. (Where did they range? Wes wondered. He’d heard that the heated enclosures were vast, but how vast could they be?) The tropical fruit display was the hardest to ignore. The colors alone made him stop and stare. He knew the bright reds and yellows were genetically modified for maximum saturation, but it was still a gorgeous sight. The fruit was stored under heavy glass, like diamonds of old, but the shops always left out a few trays to tease passersby with their flowery scent. They passed a chocolate shop selling handmade artisanal candy that cost more than the two of them put together (hired guns had nothing on small-batch truffles).
The food line was about to close, but they made it there in time. As they sat down with their bowls of cheap gruel, Shakes’s pocket began to vibrate. He picked up his phone. “Valez,” he answered. “Uh-huh? Yeah? Okay, I’ll tell him.” He flipped it closed.
“What was that all about?” Wes asked, slurping from his spoon and trying not to retch.
Shakes grinned. “Looks like we got us a job. Some chick’s looking to hire a runner and they hear she’s got credits to burn.”
7
NAT STARED AT THE FOUR PLATINUM CHIPS in her locker. She tried to make them disappear and reappear in her pocket as she had the day before, when she’d nicked them from her table. Casino security was convinced the thief had somehow made off with them, although they didn’t know how. There was nothing on the tapes. She focused on the chips, but nothing happened. They stayed on the metal shelf, unmoving. It was a shame that a mages’ mark wasn’t of much use to anyone, especially the marked themselves. While it had come in handy during a few tough situations, Nat had no idea how to use her power or how to control it; like the voice in her head, it came and went without warning, and if she tried to summon it directly, it was even more elusive. She could feel the monster inside her, feel its anger, impatience, and power; but it came and went like the wind and could abandon her at any moment. Days like today she almost agreed with the zealots on the nets. That the mark was a curse.
She had put feelers out for a runner yesterday, letting people know that she could pay, that she had gotten lucky on a bet, but so far no one had bitten. She put the chips back in her pocket, feeling reassured by their weight next to the small blue stone. If she played her cards right, together they were her ticket out of the city.
At her table her predecessor, Angela, was in the middle of performing the ending ritual—clapping her hands and turning empty palms toward the ceiling to indicate to surveillance that her shift was over.
“You heard about the new ret scans?” Angela asked. She gathered her things and let Nat slide behind the table. “You know, to root out lockhead lenses?”
“Yeah,” Nat said.
“Good thing, can’t have any of that filth around,” Angie sniffed. “You know what they’re calling them now? Rotheads. Get it?”
“Right,” Nat said, averting her eyes. She’d heard the rumors but she didn’t believe them—had never seen any proof to the stories—and she should know. Just more lies and propaganda, just another way to keep the public fearful and submissive.
She dealt the cards but her players left one by one until there was only one guy at her table. It was Thursday, the day before payday, when everyone was poor. Tomorrow the casino would be filled with crowds angling to cash in their paychecks, some of them tossing down their stubs right on the gaming tables. Occasionally someone got lucky, betting it all on some hunch, riding the streak, beating the house at every turn. But that was like having your number come up for a visa to Xian. It hardly ever happened, and when it did, security was on the table so quickly your luck was gone before you knew it.
Nat shuffled the deck, letting the cards make a satisfying rippling sound as they moved from one hand to the other like an accordion, before dealing the next round.
The remaining player at her table was a sloe-eyed boy with a wisp of a beard on his chin, sporting scary-looking tats on his brown arms. A veteran for sure, a bruiser, a bodyguard on his day off, Nat thought. Then the boy smiled, and Nat was struck by how suddenly young he looked, how innocent, even with a malevolent hissing snake on his forearm.
She motioned for him to cut the cards.
The dark-haired boy squinted at her name tag as he did so. “Hi, Nat. I’m Vincent Valez. But everyone calls me Shakes. Oh and I forgot to give you this earlier.” He handed over a worn-out food provision card, his fingers trembling a little, a telltale sign of frostblight. The human body wasn’t meant to live in subzero weather. Most people ended up with a few tremors, while the unluckiest ones lost their eyesight.
“You know we’re not supposed to take these anymore,” she said as she swiped the card through a reader. Everyone in the country was given a Fo-Pro card, which entitled the bearer to the necessary sustenance—powdered soy milk, protein squares, the occasional sugar substitute—the government’s one concession to public welfare, one step above the charity food lines. The cards weren’t supposed to be valid anywhere but the Market Stations, but in New Vegas, anything could be traded for casino chips.
“But I’ll make an exception,” she told him, as his visible disability was hard to ignore.
A few more players took seats at her table and a waitress in a skimpy dress sailed by. “Cocktails?” she sang in a breathy voice.
While the rest of the table placed their order, Nat dealt the next hand, the cards flying off the deck to each spot on their own. She looked around, relieved no one had noticed, and wondered how long it would take them to realize she had no business working in a casino.
Somehow, the ace landed on Shakes’s place, and she watched as he made a killing.
“Thanks.” He winked.
“For what?” She shrugged. If only she could do that all the time.
Shakes leaned over, a little too closely.
Nat regarded him warily, worried that he read too much into his earlier win.
“Heard you’re looking for transport. You serious about getting out?” he asked.
She looked around, then nodded imperceptibly. “Ryan Wesson?”
Ryan Wesson. It was the one name that had come up again and again when she’d asked if anyone knew a runner. Well, if anyone can get you out of here, it’s Wes. Wes has got the fastest ship in the Pacific. He’ll get you where you need to go.
Shakes took a sip from his mug. “Not by a long shot,” he said, grinning. “But I do speak for him.”
“Looking for Wesson?” asked a veteran at the table who had been eavesdropping on their conversation.
Nat nodded.
The toothless boy laughed a bitter laugh. “You know where you can find him, miss? Hell. After Santonio, that’s where he should be.”
“Hey, man, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shakes retorted, his face turning red. “You weren’t there, you don’t know what went down.”
Nat didn’t have time for arguments. In a few minutes, Manny would move her to the next table as Shakes had won big on his next hand as well. She had to ask now before she got pulled out of there. Who knew if she would ever get another chance?
Waiting until the eavesdropper turned to the waitress to order a drink, Nat leaned in and whispered, “Look, I don’t care what happened in Texas, I hear he’s the only one who can get me past the fence and into the water.” She pushed his winnings
toward him. “So will he do it? I need to leave as soon as possible.”
Shakes waved off the chips, gesturing instead for more points on his Fo-Pro card. “It depends. How lucky have you been lately?”
8
“THAT HER?” WES ASKED, PEERING THROUGH night-vision ’ocs. The green screen on the binoculars showed a slim, dark-haired girl walking down the street. She wore a long dark coat and a wool cap pulled low on her forehead and a scarf that covered most of her face. He handed the glasses to Shakes, who stood next to him on the balcony.
“Yeah, that’s her.” Shakes nodded.
Wes frowned. Well, what did you know, it was the blackjack dealer from the Loss—the same one who had thrown him off his game, the reason his team had lost faith in him. “You think she’s for real?”
“Pretty sure. Couldn’t have been easy, letting me win with all those cameras around. Not really sure how she managed it in the first place.”
“Maybe she was setting you up,” Farouk called from inside the small apartment. The kid was always butting in where he wasn’t invited.
“And maybe you talk too much,” Shakes grumbled. “She’s the reason you didn’t eat goop tonight, you know.”
Farouk put his feet up on the shabby couch. “So, she let you win a few credits, so what. So we got steak for dinner.”
“Yeah, we don’t owe her nothing,” Daran agreed, taking the binoculars for a look. But he didn’t seem to recognize her from the other night.
Farouk let out a large burp and Shakes grimaced. “She can pay, and god knows we need the work.” He’d outlined her proposal to the team earlier: She needed a military escort, protection through Garbage Country, passage out to the sea as far as New Crete. She would pay them half now and the rest once they arrived at their destination.
“She’s not marked, is she?” Zedric asked. “You know we don’t mess with ice trash.”
“What did they ever do to you, man?” Wes asked, annoyed.
Zedric shrugged. “They breathe. It’s unnatural what they can do . . . they have no place in this world, and you’ve heard what they say happens to them . . .” He shivered and looked away.
“Relax, her eyes are gray,” Shakes explained.
Zedric sneered. “Rets can be faked.”
“Not easily,” Shakes argued. “I’m telling you, she’s legit.”
“Why New Crete?” Wes wanted to know. “Nothing there but penguins and polar bears.”
“You know why,” Daran said. “Probably another delusional pilgrim looking for the Blue, but she just won’t admit it.”
Wes sighed. He knew Daran had guessed correctly. There was no reason to go halfway around the world except in search of paradise. There’s nothing out there, he wanted to tell her, and looking for something that didn’t exist was a waste of time and heat credits.
Maybe he could sell her on the tent cities in Garbage Country instead. Try to talk her out of risking the black waters.
He thought of the last girl who’d asked for his help to the Blue. Juliet had also wanted out, but he’d turned her down. He wondered what happened to her; rumor had it she died during the bombing at the Loss. Jules did like her cards. He didn’t want to think about what that meant, if she was truly gone. But what else was new. Everyone he loved was dead or lost. Mom. Dad. Eliza.
“We don’t need this job, man. Remember there are things out there in the Pile. We barely made it out last time, and the water’s even worse.” Daran flexed his muscles, and the scars on his hands turned pink at the effort, souvenirs from the region’s insurrections.
Wes agreed with him. He knew what was out there. And even if they made it through Garbage Country, the corsair ships would be circling the toxic oceans, ready for fresh meat, fresh cargo for the slave holds. It was getting harder and harder to evade them.
“What’s your gut say?” Wes asked Shakes again. He trusted Shakes with his life. They’d been through a lot together since they were rooks, especially that last deployment when they were sent down to what the government called a “routine police action” and what everyone else called the Second Civil War. Texas had been the last holdout to sign the new constitution and was punished for its insurrection. What was left of the state that wasn’t covered in ice was covered in blood, its militia utterly decimated during the final battle at Santonio.
“She said she has the credits. I believe her,” Shakes said.
They were in a standard-issue apartment, in one of the new developments off the Strip. Casino dorm. Much nicer than that hovel where they bunked. Wes looked west, where the shining lights of the casinos glowed in the gray sky. In a few minutes, as it did every night, Kaboom! would play on the main stage at the Acropolis, reenacting the huge blast that had torn a crater-size hole in the Loss the other week. “Excitainment” it was called.
Wes checked his watch and looked through the binoculars at the girl again. She’d pulled off her scarf, and he could see her face clearly now.
“How much did she say?”
“Told you—twenty thousand watts—half now, half when it’s done,” replied Shakes.
Twenty thousand watts. A king’s ransom for safe passage through the Pacific. How could a lowly blackjack dealer have enough credit in her account to offer them a payday so big they wouldn’t have to work the rest of the year?
Twenty thousand watts.
Wes inhaled sharply, remembering those glittering five-thousand-credit chips on the table.
There had been exactly four of them on the stack.
He hadn’t swiped them, but somehow they had disappeared. Carlos told him that table had come up short exactly that amount, so where was his cut? Wes had told the security chief he had no idea what he was talking about, if he had it, he’d give it, and of course, Carlos hadn’t believed him. Wes had been puzzled at first, but as the week wore on it became clear that Carlos was serious, that his old friend wouldn’t cover for him. The credits were gone and he expected Wes to cough them up, favor or no. Wes would have to find a way to pay him off soon, or get out of the city if he knew what was good for him.
Wes hadn’t been sure before, hadn’t believed she had the audacity to pull it off, but now it was obvious he had underestimated the pretty dealer.
Nat hadn’t returned those chips to the casino after all—she’d taken them. Somehow, she’d intuited that the blame wouldn’t fall on her. Why not let him take the heat for it; what did she care? He was nothing to her.
Wes was impressed. He’d thought he was running a game, but he had been outplayed.
Natasha Kestal. Blackjack dealer. Pilgrim. Thief.
9
WES WAS NOT ONE TO TAKE A JOB unprepared, and he’d had Farouk check out Nat, not that there was much to find. No school records, no military ones either; she hadn’t been recruited for officer training and she hadn’t volunteered. A civilian. With no record, no online profile. As far as they could tell, she’d only arrived in New Vegas a few weeks ago.
Those credits she was offering as payment were rightfully his, Wes thought, but now she was making him work for them. He had to hand it to her—that took style.
She’d let Shakes win a few big hands as an apology, and while it would be enough to feed them for a few more days, after that, they would be hungry again. Their Fo-Pro card was fake, and it would be deactivated soon, just like the others they’d forged. They weren’t eligible for real ones, not with their records. Since he’d rejected Bradley and forsaken the death races, they were living on fumes.
“What’s the holdup? We already agreed, we’ll take the bounty, that’s a meal ticket for sure. And when we turn her in, if she’s got the chips on her, we’ll take them, too, along with whatever’s left in her apartment,” Daran argued. The military paid a reward of five hundred credits for each potential fence-hopper, and the plan was to turn her in so they could collect, as well as rob her in the process. “Pilgrims talk a big game; we’ve been taken for a ride before by people who can’t pay.”
Wes
had to admit Daran was right, that was what they had agreed. It was even Wes’s idea to turn her in, but that was before he had recognized her through the binoculars.
Down on the sidewalk, Nat crossed the street and disappeared from sight.
Wes studied the glittering landscape of New Vegas, the casinos, old, new, destroyed, and refurbished. Thank god for the Hoover Dam. The fossil fuels left were only available to the military or to those who stole from or bartered with the military, but hydroelectricity let Vegas pay its electric bill.
Wes had been an errand boy for several bookies before he was ten. He understood New Vegas was a cockroach; it would endure through greed and lust. It had shrugged its sequined shoulder at the Big Freeze. Wes respected the city that had shaped him into a survivor.
He had to make a decision. Kaboom! was about to climax with a massive explosion, and the noise would be loud enough to drown out their assault. Wes looked down at the floor that was rigged with bombs, enough to create a hole in the floor and drop them through the ceiling below, where they could snatch her, haul her in for the reward, and take whatever she had on her. It was getting harder and harder to disappear someone these days; the city had cameras on every corner, every bridge; otherwise he’d have just taken her off the street.
The team looked at him for orders. He had to decide.
Farouk knelt by the complicated mess of red and green wires. It would be easy enough to patch up the hole and leave no trace of their operation. When they were done, she’d be just another missing person, a flyer on the wall of a bus stop, a photo on the back of a Nutri carton. And they would be five hundred credits richer, more if they believed Shakes.
“’Rouk?” Wes asked.
“Say the word and we can blow the joint and be inside in fifteen seconds.”
“Think she knows we’re right above her?” Wes asked. Nat had crossed the street to enter the same building they were in; she lived in the apartment unit located directly below them.
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