by Natasha Ngan
Something about what he’d just said felt wrong to Silver. She felt her heart twist. ‘Put us through all this?’ Suddenly, she understood exactly what had happened. ‘Our birthchips,’ she whispered, her voice dull with supressed anger. ‘You knew they’d follow us.’
Joza grimaced. ‘Yes. We’ve got a relationship with Little Mae in the Limpets, and over the years we’ve cultivated her reputation. We knew you’d be going through her, and she had orders to inform the Pigeons when you left. But we wanted you to bring the Council here, Silver. To Iarassi. It wasn’t our plan for you to stop at the village. What we wanted, you see, was –’
But he didn’t finish his sentence, because Butterfly had stood up suddenly, leant across the table and punched Joza hard in the jaw.
Joza fell to the floor. A few people nearby ran over, crouching over him to check if he was all right, but Silver just peered round the table and looked down at her brother. He was kneeling up from where he’d fallen, clutching his jaw. He looked at her with a painful expression in his eyes.
She resisted the urge to throw an extra punch of her own. She turned to Butterfly, who was breathing heavily, his hands in fists by his sides. ‘Nice one,’ she said, and they walked away.
32
Cobe’s Secret
The inner city was busy that night. New York Strip, one of Neo-Babel’s most popular entertainment hubs, was especially crowded, its riverside streets writhing with people. People roaring with laughter on the bars lining the balconies, people picking their way from boat to boat in the floating arcade that bobbed on the river. A few Limpets beggars tried their luck with the drunks hanging outside club entrances, while the more enterprising poor wove their way along the riverside, selling theatre and club tickets and portable shishas. Groups of gossiping young Mainland and Japanean women sauntered along. They were dressed in the latest fashions; metallic capes and ridged hats, colourful bands of decorative paint striping their faces, the heads of decorative pet micropandas and blue foxes poking out the tops of their bags.
As Cobe pushed his way through the crowd, some of the young women glanced hopefully in his direction, but he didn’t notice them. He moved quickly. Head down, eyes on the floor. He turned off the main strip onto a side street. Halfway down, he slipped inside a shadowy entrance.
All Elites had membership to the Manhattan Apartment, one of Neo-Babel’s most exclusive private clubs. Because of its limited membership, the club was never very busy, and that was exactly why Cobe was going there. For the last few nights after Ember had told him about the attack on the village where Butterfly and Silver had been staying, he’d wanted somewhere quiet to drink. Drowning your sorrows, he thought. I think that’s what they used to call it.
At the club entrance, a bouncer scanned his birthchip. Usually, he was allowed straight through, but this time the bouncer laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Sir. Follow me, please.’
‘Is something wrong?’ asked Cobe. Perhaps the club’s management were cautious of letting him in again after last night’s visit, which had ended with him asleep on the floor at the foot of the bar, a pool of vomit by his mouth soaking into the varnished plastiwood floors.
The bouncer didn’t reply. He steered Cobe into a small room he’d never been in before, with curving walls in a semi-circle shape. Heavy curtains hung across its entrance. A padded seat draped in the same material lined the rounded walls.
‘Wait here,’ the bouncer instructed before leaving.
Cobe had just enough time to wonder what he was waiting for when there was a rustle of movement behind him, and he felt a sharp bite in the back of his neck.
He was unconscious before he hit the floor.
A touch of laughter, a small man in a hat. Bright lights going by.
Cobe blinked. Stared blearily around. Blinked. He felt dazed, slow, as if tar had seeped in behind his eyeballs and clotted his brain. He bounced and knocked his head against a taut piece of semi-translucent fabric to his right, realising dimly he was in a moving rickshaw.
More laughter. The tinny click of a lighter flicking open and then a sweet, sickly smell.
The man beside him held out a pipe. ‘Shisha?’
Cobe shook his head. He recognised the squat figure with its fat round head and bulbous eyes. A name bubbled to the top of the soup that was his brain; Finch. Pinchy Finchy, as he was better known in the Stacks; a senior Council member who worked in the Department of Security. Pinchy Finchy who had wandering hands.
The rickshaw swayed. Cobe almost fell unconscious again, his eyes turning in their sockets as he felt a tug of drowsiness. Laughter drifted in and out of his mind. Lights outside, whizzing past. He struggled to hold on, to stay awake, but everything felt fuzzy and out of reach. He turned to Finch and tried to speak but couldn’t. The sickly sweet smell of the shisha had wrapped around his tongue, squeezing it still.
‘You’d better rest up while you can,’ said Finch in his thick voice. He exhaled slowly, filling the rickshaw carriage with the heady smell of sugared apples. His fat, chapped lips stretched into a smile. ‘Senior Surrey is not best pleased with you. I imagine this is going to be a long night.’
Senior Surrey? Cobe’s mind latched onto the name, and the Head of the Elites’ cold, handsome face flickered into his mind. There was a jolt of something deep in his chest, but as soon as it came it was gone, and then the face was merging with Finch’s, and, smiling, Cobe closed his eyes, mumbling softly, ‘Pinchy Finchy, Pinchy Finchy,’ until he drifted back to sleep.
When he next woke, Cobe felt a cold hard floor beneath him and goosebumps dotting his exposed skin. There was a sharp hospital smell in the air, and silence.
Unlike in the rickshaw, his mind was sharp and clear. He lay unmoving, his eyes squeezed shut. He remembered the bite of a needle in his neck. The sweet smell of apples. Pinchy Finchy’s gurgling laughter. Whatever was happening to him, he realised, it was the Council’s doing.
Cobe opened his eyes. A single bulb stared down at him out of a grey ceiling. He couldn’t see anything else. He shivered, and realised suddenly he was completely naked. He sat bolt upright, clutching at himself, and the room swung into view. It was large, with the same grey walls and floor as the ceiling, empty except for a plastimetal table at one end on which lay a gun. He recognised the room as one of the interrogation cells in the basement levels of Central Police Command.
A burst of laughter from behind him made Cobe turn round. He tried to scrabble to his feet, but he was still dizzy and his legs were jelly. They crumpled beneath him and he smashed back to the floor.
Ember let out another laugh as he tried to shield his body from her view. She was leaning against the wall in front of him. She wore her Elite uniform, though her hair was wild and loose around her face, and there was an ugly smile on her painted lips.
‘Sorry about your clothes,’ she said, tossing a bundle of fabric to him.’You vomited on yourself in the rickshaw, so we threw them away. Must have been Finch’s shisha. The smoke didn’t agree with the drugs we gave you.’
‘What do you want?’ asked Cobe coldly, pulling on the underwear and plain top Ember had given him.
She pushed herself off the wall and sauntered over, sneering down at him as though he was a Limpets beggar on the street. ‘What do I want? I don’t think that’s the right question to be asking. I think I should be asking you, Cobe, what you want.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Since your mind seems to have been addled by the drugs,’ Ember sighed, ‘let me explain it to you.’ She circled him slowly as she spoke. ‘Yesterday, when I was leaving the Council District to do some shopping in the inner city, I ran into two little Limpets rats. One of them told me rather a strange story. See, this boy – Akhezo – seemed to think he had made some sort of deal with you.’
Cobe said nothing, but inside his heart thudded madly.
‘Ridiculous, I thought at first,’ she continued. ‘Yet the boy’s story was scarily accurate. He described you in perf
ect detail, even down to your pathetic little mannerisms and what you were wearing that night. And his story about meeting you beneath the Pigeons’ skylung also rang true, since following the delivery was part of your assignment. However.’ She paused in her circling. ‘One thing about his story didn’t make sense.’
Cobe knew what was coming, but he didn’t see how he could avoid it. His eyes darted round the room. There was only one door, and Ember stood in his way. He doubted he could overpower her in his current state. What had the drugs done to him? Then he remembered –
The gun on the table.
Ember took a step towards him. ‘Why would one of our own Elites want to stop us tracking Butterfly and Silver?’ she asked, taking another step closer. ‘To stop us destroying a settlement that could be home to an anti-birthchip group?’ Another step. ‘Care to tell me? Why would someone want to do that? Why would you –’
Cobe lunged forward, thrusting his knee up into her stomach. She doubled up for a second, just long enough for him to run over to the table, and he reached out, his hand inches away from the gun –
Smack!
Something crashed into his back. He fell hard onto his face. A moment later, his whole body went rigid as a stungun pressed into him. Pain screamed through his body at the electric shock. He struggled to remain conscious. Cobe struggled to his feet to run but Ember grabbed his neck, yanking him towards her. He choked, scrabbling at her hands tight around his throat.
‘I should have known to expect nothing less from you,’ she hissed. ‘But what I want to know is why. Why did you do it?’
Cobe tried to lift his knee to kick her, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. It felt weak, useless. ‘Put … me … down,’ he said. Each word was painful to get out, her hand was squeezing his throat so tightly.
‘Not until you tell me! Why did you want us to stop tracking Butterfly and Silver?’
He swallowed. ‘I … didn’t want …’
‘Didn’t want what?’
‘Didn’t want … them killed.’
Ember dropped him instantly as though his words had burned her. He crashed to the floor, breathing hard. She gave him a cold look. ‘You didn’t want those traitors dead? Well, thanks to you, they’re not.’
Cobe jerked his head up. ‘They’re not …?’
‘No. But four of our soldiers are. The bullets that killed them were the same ones that our Elites and police and soldiers use, so we’ve a pretty good idea that they were shot by Butterfly and Silver.’
Relief flooded Cobe’s body, but he had only a moment to relax before Ember darted forward, grabbing the collar of his top and jerking him towards her.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why do you care whether they died? Silver and Butterfly betrayed us. They’re probably working for an anti-birthchip group. If you aren’t on their side, then why not let them die for the sake of our city? Because they’re your friends?’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘I know who else are your friends. Would you betray us all just to save them, too?’
Cobe didn’t answer.
Ember smiled. ‘Shall we test that theory? Shall I kill Allum to see how far you’d go for them? Or perhaps Taiyo. She’s so small, but I bet she bleeds like a pig –’
‘No!’ he burst.
She laughed. ‘Well, unfortunately Allum and Taiyo are out of bounds. But I do know who we can spare.’ She let go of him, lifting her wrist to her arm and touching the screen of her comms cuff. A few seconds later, Allum’s voice issued from the microphone.
‘What is it, Ember?’
‘The boy and girl. Bring them here.’
Allum must have been nearby, for after just a few minutes, the door slid open and he entered the room. He held a gun to the head of an Afronese boy. The other hand clutched a girl’s shoulder. Cobe recognised them immediately from that night under the skylung; Akhezo and his friend.
‘Here,’ said Allum, pushing them forward. He didn’t even glance in Cobe’s direction.
Ember nodded. ‘Thank you. You may go.’
‘Wait!’ shouted Cobe as Allum turned to leave. ‘It’s not true what they’re telling you, it’s not –’
But Allum had already stepped out of the room, the door sliding shut behind him.
Ember laughed. ‘What did I tell you? You’re just as worthless to him now as these Limpets rats.’
She grabbed the girl and the boy by the back of their necks and dragged them over to Cobe, pushing them onto their knees. Then she stepped over to the table and picked up the gun that lay on its top.
‘Please!’ whispered the girl, her eyes fixed on Cobe. Her face was streaked with tears. ‘Help us!’
Akhezo stretched out an arm to take one of her hands in his. There was fear on his face, but when he spoke, his voice was steady. ‘Don’t worry, Neve. I’m here. It’s gonna be fine.’
Ember stood behind them and pressed the gun to the back of Neve’s neck.
The girl shuddered, but she didn’t cry out. ‘Please, please, please,’ she kept saying, her eyes never leaving Cobe’s.
‘We only need one of them to take us to the Pigeons’ new hideout,’ said Ember. ‘So which one will it be, Cobe?’
He stared at her. He wouldn’t dignify that question with an answer.
She shrugged. ‘All right, then. Let’s play a little game.’ She began to recite a children’s rhyme in a song-song voice, moving her gun from Akhezo to Neve with each beat. ‘Eeny meeny miny moe, catch a Limpets rat by its toe. If it squeals don’t let it go, but kill it quickly with one hard blow.’
On the last word, her gun fell on Neve.
Above the girl’s head, Cobe saw Ember smile. He hesitated for a second, the entire world shrinking down to just the four of them in that room, Neve’s teary eyes on his, her mouth moving almost silently now, ‘Please, please, please, please, please –’
Bang!
He snapped his eyes shut. Blood – warm, wet – splattered his face, and he heard Neve’s body hit the ground. There was a scream. Scrabbling noises. Thuds.
‘Get off me, stupid boy!’
A dull smack, and then silence.
Cobe opened his eyes. Akhezo was slumped unconscious in front of him; Ember seemed to have hit him with the hilt of the gun. Beside him, Neve lay face down on the blood-splattered floor. Cobe had seen death before, but it had never really affected him until now. It was something about how small the girl’s body looked. How her fingers were stretched out, as though still reaching for Akhezo’s hand. He swallowed down the bile that rose in his throat.
‘If only I could kill the boy too,’ Ember sighed. ‘Unfortunately, we need him alive. Well?’ Her eyes met Cobe’s. ‘Ready to tell me why you went to such lengths to save Butterfly and Silver?’
Suddenly, he was too exhausted to lie. The truth was easier. ‘I love …’ he began. But he couldn’t finish the sentence. He realised he’d never said it out loud before. Not even to himself.
Ember stared at him. Then she laughed, her cold laughter ringing in the empty room. ‘I always thought you had a thing for Silver, you filthy, Red-loving –’
‘Not Silver.’
For a moment Ember looked confused. Then her eyes widened. ‘Oh,’ she breathed, a smile twisting across her lips. ‘Butterfly. This is even better. But in case you hadn’t noticed, Cobe, he’s always had a thing for Silver.’
‘I know that,’ Cobe said, his eyes falling to the floor.
She let out yet another derisive laugh. ‘You knew, and still you wanted to save him! You really are more pathetic than I thought.’ She started towards the door. Before she left, she turned back to him. ‘I’ll send in someone to clean up this mess and take Akhezo back to his cell.’
‘What about me?’ asked Cobe. ‘Aren’t you going to kill me now you know the truth?’
Ember smiled. ‘Of course. But first, we have one last assignment for you.’
33
The Assassin’s Wife
‘I thought I’d find you two here.’
<
br /> Silver and Butterfly were in the room Silver had woken in earlier that day. They lay on the bed, Silver curled up to Butterfly’s side, having spent the whole night alternating between fits of restless sleep and long discussions over Joza’s revelation the previous day. Silver felt unbearably conflicted by her feelings for Joza. Sometimes she thought she’d burst from the anger she felt at her brother for what he had done. Other times she remembered the pain she’d seen in his eyes as he’d told her why he’d left the city and how he’d been defending people in the Outside for years against the Purges, and she knew that he was acting with the best intentions.
They had been left alone by everyone in the building until now. They sat up as a young Mainland woman with piercing grey eyes and long blonde hair looked into the room. A deep scar ran down her right cheek, puckering the skin around it and distorting the corner of her lip. Despite the scar, the woman was very pretty.
‘Butterfly,’ she said, nodding at him. ‘I need both of you to come with me. There’s urgent business to discuss.’ She disappeared, leaving the door ajar.
‘Who’s that?’ Silver asked.
‘Percie,’ Butterfly said, smiling grimly. ‘I met her earlier, while you were still knocked out. She’s Joza’s wife.’
Silver looked at him in surprise. ‘Joza’s married?’
‘Why is that such a surprise?’
She shrugged, getting off the bed and smoothing down her clothes. ‘Just that it’s a wonder he found someone to marry him since he’s such a delight.’
But Silver’s surprise had not been at how Joza had found someone to marry him. No, what had surprised her was that Percie – a Mainlander – had married her brother, a Red.
