“You name it.”
“So, they still have Gavin.”
Ford nods and rubs his stubbly chin with his hand, but his brown eyes are blank. “Who?”
“Gavin? My boyfriend. The reason I was running across the bridge. He’s the person who gave me this, by the way,” I add, grabbing the pendant and holding it away from my neck. I give Ford a pointed look.
“Hey, slow down. I remember all that. I was asking who still has him,” Ford says, crossing his arms.
“Right. Sorry.” I go on to describe the kidnappers using the few details I have. The way they spoke, their reaction to Serge. Their guns, their masks, their car.
After I finish, Ford leans back in the booth. My eyes are fully adjusted to the light now, and I can see a small scar on the right side of his chin. Probably from a bar brawl. “I don’t know these people, but they sound like Syndicate professionals,” he says. “Have you considered the possibility that you’re in over your head?”
“Pretty much every minute of every day,” I admit. “But I can’t afford to believe it. I don’t care who they are. I just want them to let my boyfriend go. Can you help me?”
Ford sighs and presses his lips together in thought, a crease forming between his perfectly straight, thick eyebrows. “If I had to put money on it, I’d guess they’re somewhere in Hades. But that’s not going to help you any.”
“Why not?” I ask. “Where is Hades?”
“It’s what we call the old mall, out past the stadium. The bottom floor is all black-market traders. Everyone with a stake in the Bedlam scum community has a guy there. But you can’t just show up there, Anthem.”
“Of course I can,” I say, though I don’t sound very convincing, even to myself. “I found you, didn’t I?”
“You have no idea what you’re saying,” Ford insists. “A girl like you? They’ll eat you alive. You won’t last ten minutes in there.”
“Don’t be so sure of what a girl like me can do.” I lean across the booth, my voice rising in pitch and volume. “I’ll be fine. Especially if you come with me.”
“Not going to happen,” Ford says quietly. “I stay as far away from the Syndicate as I can.” He looks past me toward the bar, his mouth pressed into a line.
“Me and the Syndicate . . . there’s a history. It’s a bad history.”
“Please,” I say. “I have no choice.”
He grabs at the back of his neck as if massaging a knot of tension. Then he sighs, which I take as a good sign. “You must have really liked him,” he says finally.
“I did. I mean, I do.” A silence opens up between us. “I can’t just sit back and let him die,” I add quietly. “Haven’t you ever gotten in over your head for someone you loved?”
Ford takes a deep breath and holds the air in his mouth so his cheeks puff out, then lets the air out slowly, like a deflating balloon. “Yeah.”
“So you understand,” I say gently.
“He’s a lucky guy,” he says quietly, shooting me an unreadable look. “I hope he knows it.”
Then he shoves his body out of the booth and stands next to me, offering his hand. I look down at the thick calluses on his knuckles, then tentatively take it.
“Thanks,” I start. “I know this isn’t exactly—”
“Let’s just get going before I change my mind,” he says, pulling me to my feet.
CHAPTER 18
Outside the bar, I keep pace next to Ford and pull my scarf over my mouth to escape the fumes from a garbage truck rumbling by. Our heads are bent against the wind as we head southeast, mist and damp coating our faces.
I start lagging a pace or two behind Ford, staring at the back of his head, his buzzed hair in a gray beanie above his wide shoulders. I’m grateful he’s willing to help me. But what if he’s right? What if I’m in way over my head? Then I take a surreptitious look at the picture of Gavin on my phone, wincing at his blue-black bruise. The gash in his chin. The newspaper dripping blood.
There is no choice. No decision. I can’t leave Gavin to die. I’m already suffering, I tell myself as I tighten the strap of my bag over my chest and catch up with Ford. May as well do it in hell.
After we walk in silence for ten blocks or so and I catch back up with him, Ford clears his throat. “I gotta ask, what’s it like?”
“What’s what like?”
“Your new heart!” he says, too loud for comfort. I duck my head, furtively looking around to see if anyone heard us. Luckily, the block is deserted. There’s nothing moving here except a feral-looking jackrabbit nibbling the tall grass growing around the perimeter of a derelict building.
“It’s pretty weird,” I say vaguely. “I mean, I don’t recommend letting Jax near you with a scalpel anytime soon.”
“I saw you running,” he whispers, moving closer to me. “When you left the lab. I saw you speeding down the alley like a . . . I mean, I couldn’t see your legs. That’s how fast you were going.”
I blush, embarrassed that he saw me without my knowing it. “It feels easy, running like that. All part of the weirdness.” I touch my sternum through my shirt, feel the slight rise of the skin around my scar.
“Tell me more. I mean, you don’t have to tell me, but ever since I saw you run, I’ve been thinking about . . . like . . . what if you’re part hummingbird? How cool would that be?”
I smile tightly, my face still warm. “I’m pretty sure I’m not actually part hummingbird. The heart is mostly mechanical. I guess there’s tissue around it, but I notice it whirring like a hard drive all the time. Especially if I’m nervous or moving fast. I keep thinking it’s going to burn out on me.”
“Jax says it won’t. I grilled her about it,” Ford says, suddenly looking shy.
“You did?” I’m surprised he cares so much.
“I was worried.” He shrugs. “Especially after I failed epically as a surgical assistant.”
“Oh, God,” I squeak, realizing Ford was probably in the room when Jax cut my chest open. “I, um, we don’t have to talk abou—”
“I passed out,” he interrupts with an embarrassed grimace. He looks pale and queasy just thinking about it. “The second she picked up the scalpel, I was on the floor.”
“So you didn’t . . .”
“I missed the entire operation,” he admits sheepishly.
We walk in silence along the snaking shore of the Crime Line until we pass the southernmost bridge of Bedlam, the Bridge of Peace. Brotherhood is the roughest part of the city, the place most often cited in the Dilemma’s crime blotter.
A few blocks south of the bridge, Ford hangs a right underneath a freeway overpass leaking green water onto the street below, though it isn’t raining out, just cold and dreary like it has been for weeks.
“Running fast isn’t the only thing I can do,” I say, surprising myself. I start to tell him about what happened with Serge. Being able to maneuver around bullets. The insane strength I was able to find when I needed it. His walking slows to a halt when I describe the way time seems to slow down whenever my adrenaline kicks in.
“You dodged bullets? That is sick,” he breathes, shaking his head in wonder. “I’d give anything to be able to do something like that.”
“Don’t say that. Trust me, there are a million things you wouldn’t want to give up.” Like Gavin, I think. For one.
He nods, his thick eyebrows knitted together. “I guess not.”
“You’re the only person I’ve told about this,” I say quietly. “Thanks. For listening, I mean.”
“Don’t worry, I’m good at keeping stuff to myself. Comes with living with three people in a one-bedroom apartment,” he says. Then he waves his hand at a giant building rearing up ahead of us. “We’re here.”
When I see it, I stop short and let out an inadvertent laugh, a short, miserable ha that disappears into nothing in the silent gray parking lot. It’s an old mall, like Ford said, once named Hillside Palisades. Now most of the letters have fallen off the sign, leaving fa
ded, ghostly letter impressions between the intact H and the ades.
The crumbling, fortresslike exterior of the mall encloses two full city blocks, with a mostly deserted parking lot surrounding it like a moat.
We slow our pace when we reach the parking lot’s inner depths, and I concentrate on listening for sounds coming from the mall. All I hear is the whoosh of cars from the nearby freeway and the cooing of a few pigeons pecking listlessly at a ripped package of hot dog buns. In the gray light of 11:00 A.M., the massive parking lot is dead quiet, with fewer than fifty half-wrecked cars scattered sparsely among the rows. All this open space would almost be peaceful if we weren’t about to walk into hell.
We come to a set of glass double doors with a sign above them marked HEESECAKE, and Ford pauses with his hand on the door.
“Sure you want to do this?” His dark eyes are full of misgivings. “It’s not too late to change our minds.”
I nod, swallowing an acid fear rising in my stomach as I bear down on the bar of the other door, expecting it to be locked. To my surprise, it opens easily.
Inside, it’s as busy and loud as the outside is deserted and silent. In the dilapidated marble courtyard at the center of the mall, crowds of people—including dozens of children as young as six or seven—gather in clusters around makeshift stalls. The sound of barkers yelling, people laughing, fighting, and haggling, echoes in the cavernous space. There’s no electricity but for a few generators powering a couple of Klieg lights, and the edges of the ground floor are bathed in shadow. I pull my coat tighter around me.
Ford sticks close to me. I’m happy to have him here. “We’re being followed,” he says, pointing downward and behind me, toward a kid of maybe seven or eight with frizzy curls and caramel skin. He has blue hearing aids looped around each ear, and the top of his head is level with my elbow. Ford nods hello and smiles at the kid, and in a second he falls into step next to us.
“Smokestacks, droopies, giggles,” he recites, grinning, not quite able to be as serious as the adults selling car parts, food, medicine, bullets. We turn randomly down another aisle and stand on the edge of a crowd of people encircling a felt-covered table, the air thick with rollie smoke. The dealer throws a set of dice, announcing “sevens” with a flourish of his arms, and the crowd erupts in angry shouts. I keep walking, averting my eyes from a small stage where a woman in a top hat is yelling at three younger women wearing see-through negligees, black lace garters, and sparkly, cheap-looking high heels. “I need six hundred today, each, or don’t bother showing up here tomorrow,” she says, and I shudder a little at the thought of what they’ll have to do to get it.
The boy keeps looking at me like he’s trying to peg me. “Let’s see, you ain’t here for ammo or biogenics, and you’re not one of the rent girls. . . .”
I turn to look at him. “Biogenics?”
He perks up, his posture straightening. “You want BodMod, hearts and parts? Three dollars and I’ll take you there,” he says, holding his hand flat in front of him.
Hearts and parts. A chill goes through me. “No, little man. We’re okay for today,” Ford says.
I put a hand on Ford’s forearm to get him to slow down. “I want to see it.” I have to see it. Could there really be others like Jax, people here who tamper with human bodies on the same scale?
“You sure?” Ford asks, looking uncomfortable.
I nod. “I’ll give you a dollar,” I say to the kid, “after we get there.”
“Two’s about as low as I can go,” he beams, proud of his negotiating.
“Deal,” I say, and I try not to look like I’m following him as we turn right, passing by a few food stalls selling boiled peanuts, blood sausages, and beer, and turn into a long, dark hallway that smells like formaldehyde and under that, the metallic rot of flesh and blood. I’m instantly on my guard, my heart tapping out a warning in my chest.
We walk by a few ancient, ratty recliners set up in front of TVs broadcasting cartoons and soap operas. An old woman, a kid, and a young guy about Gavin’s age are lying in the chairs, their arms hooked up to IV poles.
“Transfusions, chemo, stuff like that,” the kid whispers. “Is that what you want? ’Cuz I know the guy for that.”
“No, I’m good.” I don’t need any more illegal organs, I feel like telling him. One is more than enough. Up ahead, a café with the windows boarded up has been repurposed into a makeshift medical clinic. A bored-looking woman with a candy-colored pink swirl of hair sits at the counter and above her, what was once a coffee menu now reads:
CHOP SHOP
Kidneys: $25,000 + labor
Prosthetic arms/legs: $9,000 + labor
Artificial Heart: $100,000 + labor
Liver: $15,000 + labor
Pancreas: $20,000 + labor
Eyes: $6,000 each + labor
Breast augmentation: $2,000 + labor
Specialty organs on demand: inquire within
“Bedlam’s balls,” I mutter, suddenly feeling faint. I grab Ford’s elbow for support, worried I might pass out if I don’t get away from here. “Is that for real? Eyes? Do people actually buy dead people’s eyes and reuse them?”
“I tried to warn you,” Ford says, moving me away from the Chop Shop and back toward the main market in the lobby. “This place is no joke. Let’s just do what we came here to do and get the h—”
“Gimme my two dollars and I can show you stuff way crazier than this,” the kid cuts in as we retreat, his blue-lit hearing aids illuminating his whole head in the dim light. “This floor is nothing compared to upstairs.”
“We’re looking for some people.” Ford stops, bending down on one knee and looking at the kid with a serious, respectful expression that makes me wonder if he has younger siblings at home. “But kid, we can find them on our own. They’re bad people.”
“I know all the bad people in here,” the kid says proudly. “I do errands for them.”
I squint at the upper floors of the mall and see a few Pharm-pumped men milling around, the glint of rifles slung across some of their overmuscled chests. I dig in my jeans pocket for two crumpled bills and pass them to the kid.
“Five more dollars if you can help us find someone,” I say to him. “She’s got blond hair, she wears red lipstick, and she carries a tiny pearl-handled gun.”
The kid puts one thin finger to his cheek and thinks for a second. “What’s her biz?”
“I don’t know. Thuggery, kidnapping, thievery. She has a friend she calls Smitty. Big guy, bald,” I add, hoping a name might help.
He bites a piece of dead skin off his chapped lips and chews it thoughtfully. “Let’s try the third floor. There are a bunch of big bald guys up there.”
We follow the kid up a broken escalator with one of the railings missing. His steps are light and fast, and we almost have to run to keep pace. We round the corner on the second floor and head up another frozen escalator to floor three.
When we get to the third floor, I swallow hard. The vibe here is hushed and tense, with scowling bodyguards pumped full of BodMods standing in front of various repurposed stores. All of them seem to be watching us.
My mouth feels like it’s filled with glue as we walk past an empty lingerie store with live women displayed like mannequins in feathers and lace in the window. A red curtain flutters in the doorway as a woman and a man, both dressed in business suits, walk inside. The kid walks fast in the direction of a derelict bookstore. I follow close behind.
The glass of the bookstore’s windows has been completely papered over by comic book pages and Dilemmas so old they’ve turned brown and curl at the edges. There’s just a four-inch-square section at the bottom where we can see in. The kid points downward, indicating I should peek inside.
Ford hangs back, but I squat down and look, and sure enough, I spot a big bald head that could be Smitty’s. He’s sitting on the floor, leaning up against a broken bookshelf, and reading a comic book. A tall pile of books sits to one side of him, and I
can see a metal door toward the rear of the store. My eyes are drawn to the door, my fingers tingling as I stare at it. Could Gavin be behind it?
“That him?” the kid whispers.
I nod. The shiny dome of his head is exactly as I remember, a V-shaped divot in the pate of his skull.
I watch Smitty aimlessly flip the pages of the comic book. Then the metal door opens and a curvy blond steps out. Her hair isn’t the white-blond bob I’m expecting. That must be a wig. Her real hair hangs around her face in pretty golden waves, and her whole demeanor is softer and prettier than I remember. But I know from her sharply lipsticked brick-red mouth that it’s her. She grabs a canvas bag from one of the bookshelves and starts to rummage through it. Even with my heart revving like a jet engine, I can hear her singing a few bars from an old folk song:
Of all the crooks in Bedlam, you’re the only one I crave,
of all the crooks in Bedlam, it’s you who makes me brave,
but honey pie, you cheat and lie,
And that is why I gotta put you in the grave.
Her voice is the same scratchy pitch I hear in my nightmares. I squeeze my eyes shut for a second, resisting the urge to charge in without a plan. I turn to whisper to Ford, waving him closer. “It’s her.” He leans in, his head just above mine, and looks through the window. When I get up close to look again, she’s got the canvas bag on her shoulder and looks like she’s about to head out.
“She’s leaving. Let’s go,” Ford says roughly, already pushing me down the hall, putting his body between me and the doorway. “You too, kid. Now.”
I stumble and almost fall, but Ford’s hand wraps around my shoulder and yanks me up, and the three of us take off fast down a dark hallway reeking of urine off the main shopping thoroughfare. When we’re in near-total darkness at the end of the hall, Ford hurriedly thanks the kid and presses some bills into his hand.
“Don’t tell anyone we were here. You gotta promise,” Ford says, his voice kind but stern.
“Promise.” The boy nods, his face glowing from the blue light of his hearing aids. “You comin’ back?”
The Brokenhearted Page 11
