Brink (Spark City Book 1)

by Cameron Coral

  She saw a street train filling up with passengers, and darted across the street and through a few near misses with oncoming cars and motorcycles.

  Just as the bus was about to close its door, she shoved her arm in to wedge it open. The automated door reopened, and she hopped onto the bus and took a seat, shrinking down to try to hide from the two men who searched for her outside in the street.

  Next to her was a boy about ten years old. He looked at her with curiosity, but said nothing. As the driverless bus started heading slowly down the street through traffic, she whispered to the boy, “Did you see those two guys outside behind me?”

  He slowly nodded.

  “They gone?”

  The boy nodded again. Ida slowly rose from her seat and looked beyond to the street where the bus had been. She saw the two men walking around, searching for her.

  She kept her eyes on them as they faded into the distance, and felt hopeless to know that Vance had discovered her. Somehow there was a video that had revealed her secret, and she had one guess as to who had sold her out. It had to be the panda hybrid.

  She would go along on the job after all, she decided. And kill Gatz before he could do more damage.

  Chapter 16

  “Well, look who it is,” said Gatz as he poured a whiskey for Ida. “I wasn’t sure you would show up tonight.”

  Ida stood in front of the bar wearing a midnight purple moto jacket, her trademark black gloves, black pants, and boots. The bar was busy with patrons this evening, and there was a mix of humans and hybrids in the dimly lit room.

  As Ida took an empty seat at the bar, Gatz asked how she’d been getting to know the city. She pushed down her anger at his betrayal. She laughed like nothing was wrong and downed her whiskey. “I’ve had quite the 48 hours since meeting you.” She took another sip.

  “I love a good story. What happened?” asked Gatz.

  “Another time. Let’s just say I’ve caught the attention of some people.”

  “Wait,” said Gatz, glancing around the room. “Let’s talk in my office.”

  She followed him through the door next to the bar, and he made his way to a large executive chair behind his desk. He offered her the other empty seat. “We have to be careful that we’re not heard,” said Gatz in a low voice.

  Ida’s eyes narrowed. “Exactly whose side are you on?”

  Gatz watched her a few moments. Ida’s eyes were locked on him. He was not getting off easy. “You watched the video I gave you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you think?” asked Gatz.

  “I saw a mayor who is building a damn police force of robots that will be on every corner. Not what I would consider a good thing for people like us.”

  “Or anyone, for that matter.” Gatz stood and started pacing as he talked. “Vance Drem sells it as a safety issue—that our citizens will be better off. But you and I both know better. We’ve seen what those things are capable of. They shoot and don’t discriminate between guilty and innocent.”

  Ida shifted in her seat, wondering how she could catch him in his lie. Would he admit selling her out, or would she have to force him to admit the truth? He was dancing around telling her his allegiance. “So you’re against Drem. What are you doing about it?” She turned her head sideways to look at him. “What else do you do besides owning a bar?”

  “The bar is my main business, at least on paper. Let’s just say I dabble in political causes that are near and dear to my heart.”

  Gatz looked at his watch. “It’s time to get going.”

  Ida crossed her arms. “Where are we going tonight? What exactly are we doing? I don’t want to get involved in any—”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’re going to a meeting. You’re my bodyguard.” He unlocked a large cabinet in one corner of the room. “You can fire one of these, right?” He placed a gun on the desk in front of her.

  She held it, admiring the shape and the gleam of light on its smooth, black, polished surface. “I can manage all right.”

  “Good. That’s for our protection. Things have gotten more…complicated. Tell me about what happened to you today.”

  Ida considered what she should say and, more importantly, leave out. It must have been Gatz who sold her out to Vance Drem. Unfortunately, the list of people who knew she could heal was growing longer. First Gatz and Paul, then Lucy, and now the two men she had run from. How could they have known?

  “I was followed today.” She paused to see what kind of reaction this would register.

  Gatz looked at her with his large, black panda eyes. It was hard to gauge his expression because his face was so foreign to her. His eyes always looked sad to her.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “Two men. I’ve never seen them before until today. I got rid of them, but they said something. They were looking for me, and they said something about a video. They knew my—” Ida looked at her hands.

  “Your secret,” Gatz finished.

  She nodded, still holding the gun. “I have no idea what they meant by a video.” She pointed the gun at him. “But I bet you do.”

  Gatz stepped back a foot. “Hey, calm down. I’m trying to help you.”

  “You sold me out.” Ida eyed several wall screens of video cameras displaying the interior and entrance to the bar. “You seem to have a thing for videos. Look at all this shit, and the device you gave me with the police attack.”

  “It’s for security.”

  “How did you get the footage of the police attack on the square?”

  Gatz paused, searching for an answer. “It was given to me by a…colleague who paid someone for the footage. If the person had been caught filming, they would have been executed by the police immediately. There’s a group of us fighting against the mayor, but we are hidden.”

  Ida’s military training had prepared her for interrogation. She knew to look for certain facial tics to tell when someone was lying. But nothing had prepared her to interpret honesty in a panda’s face. Maybe she was going crazy, like all the other returning soldiers?

  Gatz stood his ground, making a convincing case. “I’m on your side. Let’s think this through. These men must have evidence of your power on camera. It’s possible the alley where you healed the injured boy had a surveillance camera. This city is heavily monitored. There are cameras, and even drones in the sky that are so high, they’re invisible.”

  Ida hadn’t thought of this possibility. A new thought entered her head—Lucy’s mother, Vera. Was it possible she had told someone? One of her drug dealer boyfriends? But why, when Ida had saved her life?

  Gatz went on. “Unless you used your power again on someone, and that was filmed.” He stopped and looked up at her. “You didn’t, did you?”

  She felt a lump in her throat. “Yes, I helped out a girl whose mom was sick.”

  “Where?” he asked.

  “It was in their apartment. No camera that I was aware of.”

  Gatz had stirred her thinking. She pictured the events from that evening unfolding again. “The men who followed me said I would fetch a high price.”

  “So they want to sell information about you to the highest bidder. I’ll give you one guess who the highest bidder will be.”

  Ida’s worry showed on her face. She lowered the gun.

  Gatz relaxed his stance. “I’ll put some feelers out there, and try to find out who is selling information. We’ll figure it out. Right now, we need to get to this meeting.”

  They took Gatz’s Mercedes SUV to the meeting. On the way, Ida plotted her escape from Spark City. She still badly needed money, and wondered what her pay for Gatz’s job would be; they’d never negotiated any rates, and he hadn’t mentioned how all this worked.

  She wasn’t sure how far she could trust him, but somehow she believed his story. So far, at least.

  Ida still worried that he was double-crossing her as they drove through the winding, slick city streets. He could be using this “job” as a mean
s to deliver her to Drem and cash in.

  But why had he bothered sending those two men to follow her? He already had her practically working for him.

  Her thoughts were interrupted when they stopped on an empty, dimly lit street. They were in a former industrial area that was now deserted. The area had been abandoned when local business took a downturn and never came back.

  Gatz parked and started walking down the street. Ida caught up and checked the gun at her side. He had given her a holster to wear underneath her jacket.

  They passed an empty parking lot. This wasn’t the right place, thought Ida. No cover for a meeting.

  Past the empty lot, they found themselves on a sidewalk overgrown with wild grass and weeds. Off to one side was a side alley. It wouldn’t be the first time the two of them had found themselves in an alley.

  Gatz walked on her left side, intent on their destination. Suddenly, Ida slammed her body into him, using her whole body to push him into the mouth of the alley. He was heavier than she had expected, but what did she know about panda-human body mass?

  He nearly lost his balance, then started righting himself. She rushed him again with all her might, and this time used a foot to swoop one of his legs out from underneath him. He fell hard on the concrete floor of the alley.

  “What the fuck?” He turned over on his back to look up at her, arms raised in acquiescence.

  She stood over him with the gun trained at his chest.

  “Admit it. What we’re doing—this meeting. You’re selling me out. Even if you didn’t film me, you’re cashing out.” She kicked him as if to prove her point.

  “Ida, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “My name! I never told you my name. How did you know it unless you’re spying on me?”

  Gatz realized his mistake. “Look, I did some research on you. You would do the same thing in my position.”

  “I think you were calculating how much money you could make off me,” said Ida. “I bet this meeting is to deliver me to the highest bidder.”

  “Fine. If that’s what you think, leave. Keep the gun. But I need to get to my meeting. I can’t be late.”

  Was he bluffing? Ida couldn’t be sure. All she knew was she didn’t want to walk voluntarily into a situation where the powers that be were ready to buy her. Or do worse.

  “So be it.” Ida turned and ran from the alley. She doubted Gatz would try to follow, and even if he did, she didn’t think he could run as fast as her.

  She ran into another alley and saw a ladder, which she used to climb to the roof of a three-story building. She slid to the roof’s edge and lay on her belly.

  She could see Gatz’s feet in the alley. He slowly stood and dusted himself off, pulling his fedora back on.

  He walked slowly out of the alley, taking care to look around and make sure the coast was clear. He was probably checking that a crazy ex-soldier lady didn’t run up and knock him down again. She smiled to herself at the thought of her taking down the human-panda creature. It took a hard body slam, but she got that sucker on the ground.

  Would I have shot him? A chill ran down her spine at this thought. A slight pang of guilt hit her. He was walking into this situation, whatever it was, alone. The fact that she wasn’t with him didn’t stop him.

  He started walking down the street quickly, anxious to get to his destination. Ida made a quick check of her nanowatch to view the GPS map. It showed her that the nearest landmark was a planetarium.

  In the distance, she could see the old, now-abandoned museum with its large, circular dome. Although the city hummed in the distance with its sirens and bright lights, there had been no cars in this deserted area.

  Until now. Ida saw two cars following each other pull up to the deserted museum. The cars were dark, and she couldn’t tell their make or models from this distance.

  She caught a final glimpse of Gatz walking quickly to one side of the building and disappear through a door.

  A few men exited the stopped cars. The drivers had turned their lights off on approach. They huddled briefly, then walked up crumbling, concrete stairs to the planetarium entrance. She couldn’t make out any details about the men from this distance.

  Ida decided she would make her way closer to the building and see if she could learn any information about what Gatz was doing, and who he was meeting.

  She wondered if the mayor himself was in the meeting. He would find himself sorely disappointed when there was no prize healer. Perhaps she would be sought after as a bodyguard. A bodyguard for the elite.

  And the corrupt. Another shiver passed through her body at the thought.

  After she had exited the roof using an old metal fire escape, she moved back into an alleyway. A large rat darted in front of her. She must have knocked it from its home when she landed on a few old wooden boards and long-forgotten trash piles.

  Rats she didn’t mind. Hybrids with guns—that was another story. In the war, in the outer territories, humankind fought to survive, to keep this tenuous grasp on what they once had.

  It was widely rumored that hybrids, frustrated with their inferior treatment by humans, had played a hand in helping the invading alien forces.

  But it was never proven, and hybrids continued to live in the safe cities, far from the wars. Ida and her fellow soldiers were tasked with keeping them safe.

  And now, here she was following one into some unknown, probably dangerous situation.

  Well, Ida had never been one to take the safe route.

  She made herself a deal. She’d find a way in. If she found out the panda was selling her out, she’d shoot them all, destroy the video evidence, and escape the city.

  And if he was telling the truth? She was sure he wasn’t.

  A trio sat inside a large, oval-shaped room with giant floor-to-ceiling paned windows within the damp, crumbling planetarium. Outside, the waves of the giant lake were restless and chopped at the windows. Gatz and two men were quietly discussing matters while three other men stood near the entrances, standing guard.

  One of the men smoked. The other was bearded, with a scar running down one cheek, and this was their third meeting.

  The meetings went like this: Each came with a new piece of information, and each left knowing more than they started with. The exchanges were critical in the resistance against Vance Drem. Tonight, Gatz had learned the mayor was not just ill, as rumored, but that he was terminally sick. Nobody knew how long he had, and they spent a few minutes speculating.

  It was Gatz’s turn to disclose information. “I have something sensitive.” He paused and looked at both men in turn. “I don’t have proof, but—”

  Suddenly they heard a noise like a clanging of pots and pans. It sounded like it was in the room next door. They all jerked back, already on edge. If they were caught together, they would be imprisoned or killed. Death would be the easiest route when faced with Drem’s system of justice.

  “Edwards, go check on that,” said the smoking man to one of the bodyguards.

  The man walked out of the room in the direction of the noise.

  Turning his attention back to Gatz, the smoking man said, “Tell us quickly, we don’t have much time.”

  Edward’s pulse quickened as he entered the museum’s old banquet hall kitchen. He thought it was probably a raccoon or a drunk bum, but worried anyway.

  This whole place was giving him the creeps. It was old and smelled like rotting wood, and something worse that he couldn’t place. It was freezing, since many of the giant window panes had been knocked out.

  The moon was full this evening, and coated everything in a pale, eerie glow. Edwards obeyed his orders and scanned the large, dark kitchen, shining the light beam from his custom hi-tech watch in two of the corners.

  One side of the room looked like squatters had thrown a party. There were empty bottles of wine and Jack Daniels, and Pabst Blue Ribbon cans littered around what looked like a small deserted campfire.

 
Earlier that day, Edwards had summoned the courage to ask his boss for time off. He’d said he wanted to take a trip to what remained of New York City to settle some personal business. But Edwards planned to head south and never come back.

  He was tired of this life, of following orders to make someone else rich. He thought about this as he edged around the room cautiously with his pistol drawn, unsure of what lurked in the dark corners of the room. He had started envisioning his new life. Somewhere he had once read in a book that if you thought long and hard enough about a thing, you could make it come true. He dreamed of sitting on a beach with a cold margarita in hand and a beautiful Mexican woman by his side.

  This was the last thing Edwards remembered before he felt a sting in his neck and everything went black.

  That will not feel good in the morning, thought Ida as she stood over the body in the kitchen. She tossed aside the used tranquilizer vial she had used to inject the man, taking him down quietly and without a fight. She had noticed it earlier in Gatz’s office arsenal, and pocketed the small tranquilizer gun. She supposed it could have been filled with something lethal, but she found the man’s pulse.

  She couldn’t risk being discovered before she had time to confirm her suspicion that Gatz had betrayed her. And if he had, she would put a bullet in his brain.

  Before the man was sent to investigate the noise—she had accidentally kicked one of the old wine bottles lying around—she’d had a decent vantage point, and was able to hear most of what Gatz and the men were saying.

  She had been about to hear what Gatz was going to reveal. Now, she had probably missed it. Edging her way back to the kitchen entrance, she pressed her ear against the crack in the door so she could hear.

  Chapter 17

  “If what you say is true,” said the man with the scar, “then Vance will die! I’ll tear his throat out.”

  “I know. Keep your voice down,” said Gatz. “I know you have a personal stake in this. That your son—”

  “Don’t you mention my son!” The scarred man suddenly had a knife in his hand, and drove it into the tabletop. He stood and looked at Gatz and the men. “Nobody says anything about my son.”