“I’m going to rescue Mariah,” she announced. It was, after all, her fault.
“I’m with you,” Colin said, glaring daggers at Kimber.
Arden wasn’t surprised by Colin’s easy willingness to throw himself into danger alongside her. She was grateful even. Though that only increased the pressure to make this work. Or else she’d feel even worse.
Kimber huffed and flicked her hair. “I’m just saying, we need to look at this logically. How are we going to rescue her so close to the next heist? We don’t have the manpower, for one. And an operation that size takes time to plan.”
“I don’t care about that.” Uri turned to them, eyes blazing. “I want Mariah.”
“We know,” Niall said. He made no effort to falsely sooth Uri. “It’s your op. How do you want to run this?”
Uri seethed. “We need to go in there with our phasers and take the bastards out. Mariah is all that matters.”
“I said I’d get her,” Arden said, standing and squaring off against the group. “That makes this my op.” She turned to Uri. “Get a grip on yourself. If I can’t trust that you’ll maintain control, I can’t trust you to have my back. And I will not put myself in danger because you can’t focus.”
That seemed to be the shot of cold water Uri needed. He finally backed down, his shoulders slumping. He blew a breath and ran a hand through his hair. “Sorry.”
Arden walked over and placed her hand on Uri’s back. “We’ll rescue Mariah. I promise. We just need to figure out how.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Kids surrounded Dade as he sat cross-legged on the floor with his Ghost mask still in place. Their hands reached forward to touch him, dipping into his pockets to steal pieces of candy he kept there for that reason. They thought they were sneaky. They’d grin and laugh, hiding their prizes away to eat later.
He tried to make time to spend with them after he dropped off packages of stolen VitD. It was the best part of the job as far as he was concerned. The staff didn’t mind that he lingered or that he kept his mask on. They allowed his visits while making sure the vid-feeds were turned off.
These kids were in flux status, refugees without parents. All were suffering from various stages of Violet Death, their skin marked with traces of the disease. They had been either trafficked from other cities or sometimes turned out by parents when they couldn’t offer support. Because they hadn’t had their data sensors implanted yet, it was impossible to match them back up with their families, and even more important, issue life-saving drugs. So they came to this clinic that helped abandoned kids who would die without his donations.
He always felt sad when he visited. While he enjoyed every second with the children, their situation made him desperate for change. The sadness inevitably turned to frustration and anger before he left.
What he did would never be enough. There’d always be more kids, and there would always be other facilities he couldn’t support. His efforts were a drop in the bucket compared to the complexity of the problem. The tiny ripples he made didn’t extend very far.
The thought made him frown, and he forced himself to stop and instead offer a grin to the precocious two-year-old who’d pushed her way into his lap. Her chubby hands grabbing his cheeks just under the edge of his mask, sending a sizzle of nanotech feedback to tickle his skin.
His comm link buzzed in his pocket. Dade fished it out, flicking his finger over the bio-scanner to pull up the ziptext.
I need Shine, Saben’s ping read. Will send location.
Dade read it twice, thinking he’d misunderstood. He wondered why Saben had ziptexted in the first place when using an electronic trail was too risky. The nervous energy that bothered him all morning came roaring back. Everything had been off since they’d parted ways.
They’d planned to deliver supplies together, but at the last second, Saben had gotten a ping, and then claimed personal business and bailed. Which had never happened before. Usually, Saben stayed within the radius of providing assistance whenever Dade was on a job.
Dade had gone anyway, unable to delay his delivery. It hadn’t been all that complicated to sneak out of the Tower alone. He timed his departure with the rotation of the guards and shuffled around some vid-feeds.
It hadn’t stopped him from worrying about Saben, though. And now a ziptext on top of it? Whatever he had to take care of must be something important enough for him to resort to monitored communication channels. Added to that, Saben had requested Shine. That made Dade’s instincts jump. Shine would be harder to come by than VitD. It wasn’t Dade’s usual trade, nor did he partake in getting high. He didn’t have the kind of connections that could score him any. That meant to get a hit, he’d have to troll the streets for a dealer.
He pushed back all of his questions. They’d be answered soon enough. Hopefully. At least he was still in his Ghost disguise. If he got caught buying Shine on the city cams, it would be less incriminating.
It might take some time, Dade typed. He wasn’t sure how successful he’d be at finding a dealer, much less convincing them to sell to a masked stranger.
Saben pinged back his coordinates. For the second time Dade was thrown off. What was Saben doing at the Center Clinic?
Dade left the dispensary amid disappointed cries from the children. They clung, but he extricated himself with a promise to try to visit the following week, careful not to give a specific day or time.
On the street, he looked for the darkest corners where the dealers hung out. Buying Shine made him think of Arden and the likelihood of seeing her again. Maybe he could figure out where she’d be and at least catch a glimpse of her. No, he had to wait for her to come to him. He’d promised that he wouldn’t seek her out. It was the best course of action. One he wouldn’t waver from, even though the temptation to see her again was almost too much. Arden would show up in the most unlikely places, he was sure of it.
It took a while before he scored. Turned out that no one trusted a man in a mask unless he was giving things away. Then he slipped into an area that he knew was a dead zone for the city cameras, so he could take off his mask and hood and cover anything that could be linked back to the Ghost. He kept his blackout band strapped to his wrist. To remove it would ping an alert of his location to his father on his scanners.
Dade checked the coordinates on his datapad to make sure he was headed in the right direction. He’d visited the Center Clinic only three times, and each time he’d accompanied his father. He felt vulnerable not only going to the Center as himself, which was a huge gamble, but also carrying Shine on his person.
The Center Clinic was a public hospital, so there was no reason for him to visit other than for shows of goodwill made by Croix Industries. Dade knew he would attract attention. He was always on the gossip-vids. His face a little too famous to pull off something like this. He’d be picked up on the security cams, and if questioned, he’d offer clunky excuses for his presence.
He liked a challenge, though. Besides, he owed Saben. Employee or not, he was first and foremost Dade’s friend, trusted with unquestioned loyalty. Which again made Dade wonder at the nature of Saben’s emergency.
The Center Clinic was located in an older area of the city, in the business district of Level Five. Rooms and offices had been built between existing buildings as the city fought to grow upward. This close to the city center, everything became congested and bottlenecked, the skywalks busy with pedestrians making their way home from school or work.
At the entrance, Dade paused, tipping his head to avoid the facial monitors. There were several govies at the door, their hands rested on the stun-sticks strapped to their sides. They looked into the faces of the visitors threateningly, not being subtle about it. Even if he hadn’t been aware of his father’s plan, he would have noticed their numbers increasing.
Groups of people jostled their way inside the lobby, seeming not to care about the scrutiny they received. Dade placed himself between several smaller groups entering the building, keeping his hea
d down and walking as fast as he could without attracting attention.
Once inside, he split off from the groups, keeping his head turned and looking at the floor. Dade walked right past the reception desk and the mobbing visitors who distracted the employees’ attention. No one noticed him or asked him to stop, so Dade kept walking.
The Center was split into several wings. Most of the visitors headed toward the public wing where the sunbeds were located. There, long lines of people waited to get their weekly allotted time with the only UV contact they’d ever feel on their bodies. Even then, it wouldn’t be enough to keep their bodies producing vitamin D without help. It was just enough to slow their descent to death.
There were other corridors where people waited for news of their loved one’s passing, and others for outpatient treatments or surgeries. He didn’t look at the strangers as they cried softly or stared at the blank walls with glazed eyes.
It frustrated him that those who had power, who had the ability to change lives, refused to do so. Tech had never been the problem. They had the resources to figure it out. Their ancestors had arrived with a deep knowledge of space and the human body’s reactions to various stimuli. The original scientists who’d helped terraform the planet were the leaders in their field. After all, the Old Planet was decades from the planet they inhabited now, and they’d managed to travel the entire distance without too many hiccups.
Over the generations, though, reliance on the scientists had shifted. Scientists who were so valuable in the beginning to set up the planet to sustain life, who created VitD as a stopgap to a better cure, now worked for the Solizen, barely earning enough Govie Buy Certificates to purchase food.
Dade headed for the long-term care patients. The ones who weren’t going to make it but had enough money to go comfortably and not die on the streets. Death surrounded him. The farther he walked into the depths of the Center, the clearer he felt its presence. Its touch punctuated by wails of agony from those who suffered from Violet Death, seeking relief of the blessed dark that would come with the last coma state. There were fewer visitors here as he passed room after room of sick people. Nurses dressed in white silently roamed the wards, trying to make the patients comfortable.
He took the internal quadralift, then walked through a corridor leading to Saben’s coordinates. The room was long and narrow, and rows of beds ran the length of either side. There was no color, everything white except for the silver of the machines that made low beeping noises.
There were no nurses here. The only other person in the room besides the patients was Saben. He sat hunched over a bedside with his back to the door. He held the hand of a dying boy as he whispered things Dade couldn’t hear.
Dade walked closer. The soles of his boots squeaked against the shiny tiles. He felt out of place, intruding on a moment that was clearly meaningful to Saben. It made his steps hesitant, and he hung back until he was acknowledged. Saben would know he was there and would speak to him when he was ready.
He stood close enough now to finally get a look at the boy’s face. He had almost identical features to Saben, same nose and same eye shape. He was perhaps a year or two younger than Saben, but with all the damage he’d suffered from the Violet Death, he looked much older. The boy’s skin fell from his bones like syrup dripping off a spoon. Stretched too thin in places. He’d lost his hair from the medication they’d given him, his bald head making him appear frailer. Small rasping breaths rattled in his chest.
Dade hadn’t known Saben had a brother, or cousin, or close relative—whoever this boy turned out to be. Saben had always been secretive about his former life, before he’d been chosen to be Dade’s bodyguard. He’d said that sometimes things were meant to stay as they were and that old wounds could fester into greater things if reopened. Maybe this was what he’d meant.
The boy opened his eyes, the lids bruised deeply purple, to look at Saben. There didn’t seem to be any recognition, just a blank look, like he was dead inside. Then he hacked a cough that sounded deep and wet, accompanied by a whine of pain when his body moved. Blood dotted his lips.
Saben leaned forward to wipe at them with a tissue as the boy’s eyes rolled shut.
It was obvious why Saben wanted Shine. Besides the pain, there probably wasn’t much time left. While the hospital tried to make the boy comfortable, perhaps the narcotic would let him slip off easier.
Dade felt as if he were intruding on an intimate moment, yet he stepped forward to hold the Shine disks out to Saben. Being here as a witness was painful. It squeezed his chest too tight. His hands shook. Adrenaline, frustration, and anger all mixed together until it became a pushing need to flee.
Saben didn’t turn as he took the disk and clicked open the mouthpiece, holding it to the boy’s lips. When he didn’t make a move to inhale, Saben pinched his nose so the drug was choked into his mouth as he gasped for air.
Saben pulled his hands away when the dose was gone.
The boy stilled. His breathing slowed so the sheet barely moved, but there was no more coughing and no more blood.
Dade didn’t know what comfort he could offer. He knew he should say something, but the words that came out weren’t those he’d intended to say. “He’s too far gone. The Shine is more likely to kill him rather than help.”
“I know. I want him comfortable.” Saben looked away from the boy to the empty Shine disk. His fingers twisted it, making it glitter in the overhead lights. “I would have brought it myself, but I didn’t realize until I got here that he needed a push to the other side.”
Dade nodded even though Saben couldn’t see. It wasn’t that he agreed, it was more that he understood. He also wouldn’t be able to leave someone he loved to suffer that pain if he could help. Sometimes he even wondered if the small amount of VitD he did manage to distribute made any difference. When he saw this kind of pain, though, it firmed his resolve.
“We need to stop this,” Saben said. He looked up, his eyes red rimmed and wet. “It’s unfair.”
“I know,” Dade agreed. They couldn’t change the social injustice, not really. What little they did only made a dent. But they could try.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Arden walked through the atrium of the skyport beside Colin. The design resembled a starburst with the atrium at the center. From there, spokes led out to the berths where the ships docked. The domed ceiling overhead, created from thousands of tiny triangular pieces of glass, used the small bit of light that was able to creep through the gray static to refract rainbows across the travelers.
She couldn’t shake her tension. Her body vibrated. Meets were usually faced with a high degree of confidence, not unease in her gut that told her this didn’t feel right. Mariah being taken had attached a level of alertness to her actions, keeping her ready for danger at any moment. So she couldn’t tell if what she felt was based on the actual situation, or if it was lingering anxiety.
Strangers flowed around her as they made their way to assigned berths to board jumpers that would take them around the planet’s surface. Flying was cost prohibitive, so passengers were usually only the elite: the Solizen and their top-paid employees. The majority of citizens never left the city zone. Not that anyone from Undercity would have the opportunity for escape, they remained locked up tight.
There were also berths that docked large transfer shuttles that connected with embargo vessels anchored in space, and smaller space pods that could travel between planets. Most citizens didn’t know there were spacecraft that could carry them to other planets. There was no public access to records of any kind, so it was widely accepted that ways off the planet surface had long been shut off, or at the very least, could only be accessed through another city.
Being inside the skyport always reminded her that there were other places in the universe. Not that she’d ever be able to afford a ticket off-planet. She couldn’t even afford one to city hop. Even so, when times got rough, she considered that option, thinking that maybe she could apprenti
ce herself to traders in order to escape. Colin’s pressing had reignited that line of thought.
Each brush of passengers’ bodies against hers as they hurried on their way made her jump. The reaction was the complete opposite of the blending in she was supposed to do. One particular group jostled her so completely that she stopped moving, waiting for them to pass before getting her bearings back. She found herself standing still, right there in the lobby of the skyport like a target.
“Arden,” Colin hissed from beside her, “walk.”
The harshness of his words startled her into moving. She exhaled, telling herself to get her act together.
Her face felt hot under the synth-mask, so different from the masks they wore at the club. This one was part hologram, part tissue, and it gave Arden a different face rather than just covering it. She still kept her head down, though, letting the bobbed black wig swing forward to cover her new features and hide her eyes from retinal scanners. No matter how good the synth job was, there was potential for the cameras to get a lock on them and decode their true identity with facial recognition software.
The Lasair didn’t use synths often. They were far too expensive and could easily be disrupted with an electrical current. But in cases like this, it became a necessity. Not only were they trying to stay off the govies’ radar, but the traders they were meeting were untrustworthy too. They were, after all, smugglers of stolen and illegal high-level goods, which made them dangerous criminals. She was sure they weren’t showing up wearing their real faces either.
Sometimes Lasair traded Shine in exchange for items that were easier to buy than to steal. This time, though, it was strictly a cash transaction. Arden and Colin should theoretically meet their contact, check the goods, and be on their way before the govies noticed that they didn’t have legitimate business in the skyport.
“What is wrong with you?” Colin asked under his breath as he covertly scanned the area.
The Breaking Light (Split City Book 1) Page 10
