by K. Gorman
The painkillers were back at the office. By now, they’d be an inedible pile of ash and melted plastic.
Great.
She gritted her teeth as they moved on.
Originally, the group had intended to stop at Mo’s, the local gun runner who ran his shop out of a half-buried strip mall partway between Aiden’s office and the Core. But when they had arrived, the lights had been off, the place had been quiet, and the shop’s hurricane doors had been rolled down and locked.
They'd moved on.
Now that the adrenaline had left her system, exhaustion rushed in. She fought it, focused on the pain to keep her awake. But the darkness of the tunnel and Roger’s smooth, rolling gait lulled her down. She could just rest her eyes, right? She leaned her forehead against his shoulder. He turned his head, the tunnel just light enough to make out the concern in his expression.
After a second, he faced ahead. She closed her eyes.
When she woke up, they had reached the Core.
The small storefront they stopped at had once been a tattoo parlor. Faded designs and lettering decorated the front window, spelling out Golden Wolf Studio in an old, tribal-styled script. On the bottom right of the window, several strips of clear tape held the broken pane together.
Drawn in permanent marker, a somewhat newer addition adorned the shop’s door: a snake-entwined staff that she recognized from the fronts of hospitals and clinics.
Jo blocked the door, her phone to her ear.
“I don’t know who attacked your office. They threw a grenade through the window. I wasn’t exactly taking names at that point.”
She paused. On the other side of the line, Mieshka recognized Aiden’s voice. She couldn’t hear his exact words, but the tone sounded less than pleased.
Jo’s face soured. Her next statement dripped with sarcasm. “Well, maybe you should update your security software, then. I’ve got to go. Meese is bleeding.”
She snapped the phone shut.
“I’m bleeding?” Mieshka asked. She glanced down. As far as she could tell, everything was okay. Everything hurt, but that, unfortunately, was not a new thing for her today.
“Probably.” Jo shoved the phone back into her pocket and tried the door handle. When it wouldn’t budge, she put her shoulder to the door. Wood groaned as she forced it open. “You got roughed up a bit. We’d be idiots if we didn’t take you in for a checkup.”
As they entered the clinic, the smell of antiseptic came to her. Chairs lined the lobby’s walls, and a receptionist’s desk sat empty on the opposite side. Dingy curtains separated them from the rest of the clinic.
They were alone.
Jo strode up to the desk. “Hello?”
“Shit. Just a second.”
The reply came from the far back. It sounded somewhat strangled, with a hint of an accent she couldn’t quite place. Glass clinked, and the curtain fluttered as she heard someone move around.
“Chris, go see who it is.”
Mieshka perked up. Had he said ‘Chris?’
Footsteps sounded behind the curtain. A second later, a head poked around.
Like a large portion of the Underground, Chris was of Chinese descent. He had the same olive skin tone as Roger, but stood an inch shorter and lacked the Water Elemental's menace. His black hair had been cropped short, and he wore a band T-shirt that Mieshka recognized from class.
An eyebrow lifted as he recognized them. “Meese?”
She waved her bandaged hand. “Hey.”
He ducked behind the curtain.
Roger tilted his head back toward her. “You scared him off.”
She poked his shoulder. “I bet it was you.”
Behind them, McKay slumped her packs against a potted tree in the corner and lay two rifles across three of the chairs.
Chris returned a minute later, a clipboard in hand.
“What happened?” he asked.
“She probably ripped her stitches.” Jo glanced at Mieshka’s face. “And could use a couple doses of painkiller.”
“And we don’t want this on the books,” Roger said.
“Sounds fun,” said the accented voice behind the curtain. Papers shuffled. “Bring her back here, I’ve cleared the chair.”
As Roger carried her behind the curtain, the smell of chemicals grew stronger. A shadow passed across a second set of curtains, the form blurred by the folds and the hazy overhead light.
Jo pulled the fabric back for them, revealing the room beyond.
An aging chair—no doubt a leftover from the building’s former business—sat in the center, flanked on one side by a wheeled metal table. A mix of chemistry equipment crowded its top, a simple distilling setup she remembered from class. A mixture boiled in one of the beakers, the steam captured as it rose and funneled into another beaker at its side. The Bunsen burner’s flame tickled the edge of her senses.
Beyond, another hallway stretched into the back of the building, its yellowed drywall patched and cracked. The overhead light—a naked mercury bulb with a coiled filament—had burned out in the ceiling, leaving the passageway in shadow.
A door clicked shut. Movement blurred the edge of the hallway. A second later, the doctor walked into the room.
Or, at least, she assumed he was the doctor. He wore a loud, Hawaiian-styled shirt—white, with bright pink flowers and vivid blue leaves—and faded, worn jeans cut off at the knee. Caucasian, with skin almost as white as Mieshka’s, he had thin, graying hair and a weathered look to his face.
Without a word, he pointed to the chair. Wiry muscle flexed in his forearm.
Roger put her down. She slumped back, gritting her teeth against the pain. A thin white sheet separated her from the chair’s old leather.
With his other hand, he pointed to Jo. “You, stay. The rest of you, out.”
As they filed out, Chris lingered in the background. He’d regained the clipboard, she noticed.
The doctor rolled the distilling station away, then paused by the side of the chair. He peered at her through his glasses.
“My name is Claude Deforet. You won’t remember me, but I treated you during your coma a few months back. Used to work in Mercy’s trauma ward. Good to see you conscious, at least. Although… hmm.” He scanned her body, eyes lingering where the bandages lumped under her clothing. “You have stitches? How many, and where?”
Jo answered for her. “Twenty. Six in the bicep, five in each thigh, and four on the back of her calf. She was treated by Dr. Lin on 47th Street yesterday.”
“And did Dr. Lin prescribe anything?”
“Acetaminophen, five hundred milligrams.”
Claude wrinkled his nose. “What a pussy. Chris, go get the oxycodone.”
Mieshka smiled. She already liked this doctor.
Shadow fell across her face as he leaned over her. He shone a penlight across her eyes, making her jerk back. Two fingers pressed against the inside of her wrist.
“She’s in shock.” He paused, eyes zoning out. “Heart rate normal. Burning up a little, but, in my experience, that’s normal for a Fire Element.”
“Have you treated many Fire Elementals?” Mieshka asked.
“You’re my second.” He patted her arm, then rounded on Jo. “Now, before we continue, let me see that arm.”
Jo grimaced. For the first time, Mieshka noticed the blood trailing down the mercenary's sleeve. The wound, slicing through her bicep, looked raw, ragged, and painful.
“Is it from the blast?”
The former soldier nodded. “Shrapnel. I’m fine.”
“We’ll get to that one later, then.” The doctor leaned back, giving Mieshka a view of the cracked and stained ceiling. “I need to remove her bandages. There’s a gown she can change into. Help her.”
A few minutes later, they were ready to begin. But as Deforet’s dull-pointed scissors pressed against her leg and cut through the bandage, the lights went out.
“Merde.”
Chapter 22
When K
etan awoke, Carson was watching him.
He stood in the shadows, leaning against the stripped and broken wood of the wall. Cigarette smoke curled into the air. As he took a drag, the ember underlit his face in a dim, angry glow. His eyes never wavered.
There was something wrong with the main light. It hung above the table, dark and dead, its empty glass bulb gleaming. A battery-powered lantern sat on an overturned pot underneath it, the pale, mercurial light a poor substitute for the warmth and brightness of the incandescent. The light felt weird. Otherworldly. As if they’d left the land of the living.
Carson’s eyes smoldered like the burn of his cigarette, never leaving him. They looked feral. Wild. Violent.
Adrenaline spiked through Ketan, shaking through his blood. He forced it back. Instead, he faked a yawn, stirred from the couch, and rocked into a sitting position. His switchblade fell hard against his ankle when he moved.
“Yo,” he said.
Carson took another drag from his cigarette.
They were alone, as far as he could tell. The house was quiet, still. Nothing moved.
“What’s with the light?”
He took a moment to size Carson up. Was he drunk? High? Cracked out? Hard to tell with those shadows.
Finally, Carson caved. He dropped the cigarette. Its end flared until he ground it under his boot.
“Light’s out,” he said.
“I can see that. Do you know why?”
Carson’s eyes glittered in the dark. “No.”
He pulled something out of his pocket. Metal flashed in his hand. A knife, by the way he held it. When he next spoke, his voice had a casual air. “You stealing my girlfriend?”
Guess he wasn’t blind to Leloni’s affections at the mall. Ketan relaxed, slumping back into the chair.
“No. She’s just a friend.”
Carson grunted. Metal flashed. Ketan watched it, ready in case it turned his way. He hadn’t forgotten the look on Carson’s face when he’d set the dolls on fire.
“Maybe she should have one less friend.”
The knife paused.
Ketan stiffened.
Tension crept into the air. His Element burned to life inside him, ready to strike.
The front door scraped open, breaking the silence. Footsteps sounded on the stair. A moment later, Rain walked into the room, plastic bags weighing down his skinny arms. When he caught sight of Ketan and Carson, he paused.
The teen’s gaze darted from one to another, reading the situation.
Then, they settled on Ketan.
“Gonna need you to light the stove in a few,” he said.
“Sure,” Ketan said. “I can do that.”
Carson pushed off of the wall. His boots stomped on the floor as he left.
Ketan and Rain watched him go. The front door shut. Outside, a bottle skittered and bounced across concrete.
Rain met his eye. “You know, it might be a good idea to find another place to crash.”
Ketan nodded. It was time to go.
*
He waited a good ten minutes before he started out. Like the bulb over the stove, the lights on the streets were all dark. The beam of his flashlight—on loan from Rain—flicked over the street. Cracked pavement led away from its glow, the shadows jumping as he moved.
Carson was a problem. How big a problem, Ketan wasn’t sure. He could handle himself in a fight, but his Fire Elemental powers might put him at odds if Carson got serious with his intentions. Honor vanished like smoke if the scales put someone at too much of a disadvantage. If push came to shove, Carson wouldn’t bother to wake Ketan up—he’d simply stab him in his sleep.
Rain was right. It was time to find another place.
He hadn’t gone far when footsteps ran up the street behind him. He spun. Another flashlight beam, paler and thinner than his, flashed in his face as he turned around.
“Hey.” Leloni breathed hard, parsing her message with a gulp of air as she caught up. “I heard you’re leaving?”
Word traveled fast.
“Yeah. Thought you guys could use the place to yourselves.”
“But you just got here!” She pouted, and her lip ring flashed in the light. She wore a black mesh top underneath her jacket today, along with the same pair of torn jeans in which she’d met him in the Underground. The black straps of her bra poked out from under her pink camisole.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I know.”
She followed as he turned, and the beam of her flashlight joined his as they walked up the street. Shoes crunched on loose concrete. Occasionally, a chunk would catch the edge of their toes and skitter across the road. Darkness melded the faces of the buildings together.
“You know how to get a place down here?” he asked.
Blond dreads bounced as she shook her head. “Carson already had a place. I don’t know how he got the water or electric working. The Society is in charge of that. You’d have to ask one of them. But—” She pouted again, her lip drooping down her chin. “Stay. Don’t go.”
As if on cue, another flashlight popped into view up the street, a block ahead of them. Its beam spilled onto a bag of garbage, the grungy, chipped bricks of an alleyway, and the scratched plywood that covered a ground-floor window. Ketan squinted as it turned toward him and flashed in his face.
“Hey, motherfucker!”
He recognized the voice. Devin. Leloni tensed beside him, her face purposefully blank. Her jacket brushed his arm as she inched closer to his side. She didn’t trust strangers. He remembered that much about her. Even back in Terremain, she’d always had a pack of friends around her. Friends and quasi-friends.
Here, she had few.
Maybe that was why she didn’t want him to leave.
Devin walked closer, the beam of his flashlight skipping over the broken roadway. Ketan tensed. Their last meeting hadn't started all that well.
But Devin surprised him. “You were looking for Meese, right?”
He furrowed a brow. Devin's voice was helpful and perky—not the snide sarcasm he had expected. It hadn’t been that long since their last encounter. Barely a day, by his count. Of course, time moved differently down here, where the sun didn’t shine.
And he hadn't dated Devin's sister in over four years.
“Yeah?”
Leloni shrank back as Devin approached. When he got within five feet, she vanished into the shadows behind them.
Huh. Looked like her people didn’t run with Devin’s people. Not surprising. Leloni had never been much for the establishment, and Carson seemed blatantly anarchist.
Devin lifted an eyebrow at her disappearance.
Ketan squared his shoulders and put himself in between them. “What about Meese?”
“Oh. Uh, she’s at Doctor D’s.”
Ketan straightened. “An Underground doctor?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“Someone threw a bomb at the Fire Mage’s office.”
His mouth dropped open. He sucked in a slow breath. Was someone targeting Fire Elementals? Maybe he should keep his powers on the down low for a little while longer, then.
“Is she okay?”
“I think so. Anyway, I gotta run. I’m on patrol. Gotta keep the crime down when the lights are dark.”
He turned to go.
“Hey, wait—what happened to the lights?”
“Oh. The Electric Mage is over from Terremain. They’re experimenting with the Underground grid system. It’ll be off and on like this for a few days.”
Devin’s footsteps tapped on the road as he jogged away, flashlight bouncing over the broken street. He’d been oddly cheerful for that meeting. Had he gotten over the thing with his sister?
Ketan watched him go. Soon, his light disappeared around the curve of the street, briefly silhouetting the crenelated surface of the nearest building.
When he turned back, Carson had found Leloni by the side of the road.
“You run with the Society
?”
There was no hiding his disgust. He wore the same hatred in his eyes as when Ketan had woken up this morning. One hand curled around Leloni’s slender shoulders; the other held a lit cigarette.
He shrugged. “What’s wrong with the Society?”
He had a feeling he already knew the answer. The Society enforced the Underground’s crime laws—in a brutal, if efficient, manner. You do the crime, and you do more than the time. As he had experienced earlier, Underground policing was big on the bruising.
And if ever there were a criminal element, Carson was its poster boy.
“They’re a bunch of assholes. Why? You’re not thinking of joining them, are you?”
“Nah. He wouldn’t.” Leloni leaned her head into Carson’s shoulder. She was so tiny compared to him. Delicate-looking, even with the studs on her jacket. “Fire doesn’t mix with water, does it?”
She met Ketan’s eyes, a single eyebrow lifting.
He remained silent.
“Sure. Whatever.” Carson took a drag from his cigarette. His long arm fell to wrap around Leloni’s hips as he blew the smoke out. “Come on, babe. Let’s go.”
Leloni gave Ketan one last look as Carson steered her back down the street. Then, the two became little more than shapes in the shadows, walking at the edges.
They vanished into an alley, and Ketan turned away.
He had things to do.
*
The apartment was old, dusty, and vacant.
Perfect.
His flashlight swept across the room, surveying the state of the walls, floor, and ceiling. From the outside, the building had looked solid—he even recognized the style. Whoever had designed it must have been popular in Terremain a hundred years ago, too. A boarded-up storefront sat below this suite, linked only by a shared backdoor. A backdoor so wedged against the concrete landing that he had had to kick it open. Obviously, the wood had warped—or the frame had shifted. Whatever the case, he considered it a boon.
Carson would find it hard to sneak into his new house.
