by Isaac Hooke
Translucent pods lined the walkway. Human bodies floated inside each one, blanketed in a green goo, sleepers living in the world of the Inside. One of the pods was completely black, so Hoodwink picked up the pace—the golems would be swinging by to retrieve the dead man within.
He and Tanner had to stop long before reaching Beta Station, however, because the entire section was sealed off.
Hoodwink bent forward and read the display beside the airtight doors.
Sector Depressurized.
Hoodwink gave the overlapping slabs of metal a good sideways kick, and the door rang grumpily. He glanced at Tanner. "You think the children are trapped inside?"
Tanner worked with the keypad on the display. "No. This section was sealed off four days ago. The children would've never gotten in. Which explains why my messages to Beta Station went unanswered."
"Where are you, little ones?" Hoodwink tapped his chin.
He and Tanner made for to the next closest station. Hoodwink had explored the ship thoroughly in the eight months he'd spent here, and he knew where almost all the stations were by memory.
While they walked, Tanner quietly related the events of the past two days to him. Hoodwink only half-listened, though certain key parts drew his full attention, mostly those involving Ari and Jeremy.
Even though he wasn't hungry, Hoodwink stopped at hydroponics along the way to grab some gel packets. At hydroponics, urine and feces absorbed from the pods of the sleepers provided water and fertilizer for the plants. Golems affixed to the floor processed the fruits and vegetables into the thick gel that was eventually distributed back to the sleepers. It wasn't hard to sneak out a packet or two.
After hydroponics, Hoodwink and Tanner passed the butchery, where grinders disposed of the dead sleepers and formed a grisly pâté that was also fed back to the denizens of the pod world. It was a sordid reminder that everything was reused on this ship. Everything. Hoodwink and Tanner hurried past that place.
They were forced to scale a ladder down to the next level to avoid a patrol of two iron golems. When the patrol passed, Hoodwink and Tanner climbed backed up, and finally reached the next closest station, Zeta.
Hoodwink was disappointed to find the station empty. Still, it was as good a place as any to set up a new operations base. Zeta Station had five rows of desks laid out on its metallic floor, with seven terminals in each row. Various storage cupboards lined the walls. Its long ceiling lights glowed white, some of them flickering. A window offered a view-port onto the barren moon.
Hoodwink wanted to broadcast a message to all the other stations on the ship, but Tanner urged against it, because apparently that's how the golems tracked Tanner and Ari down the last time. The safest way to contact the children was through the Control Room on the Inside, Tanner argued. Hoodwink reluctantly agreed.
Hunched over one of the stations, Tanner reported that the Control Room Box still dangled from a rope on the Forever Gate. He gave three possible destinations where he might move the Box. Number one—send it to the Black Den, the criminal heart of the city, using the coordinates of the tracker that was embedded in the Dwarf's collar. Number two—send it to the headquarters of the New Users, deep within the labyrinth of the abandoned sewage system, where Ari had left another tracker. Number three—send it to Ari's old shack of a house in Luckdown District, were Hoodwink had placed a tracker.
Because of the disk, Jeremy would know the location of the New User headquarters by now, and he'd probably strike there first. Ari's house was undefended, so that wasn't really an option. Hoodwink decided on the Black Den. Tanner explained that Ari had chosen the Den to harbor the Dwarf because it was way more fortified than the New User headquarters. She'd sent six of her New Users to guard the Dwarf, leaving a man named Jacob in charge. Jeremy would know all that too of course, thanks to the disk, and if it came down to it Hoodwink and Tanner could always move the Box again, just as long as the tracker remained attached.
"You know," Tanner said, after he'd moved the Control Room to the Den. "I almost thought you weren't going to come back, Hood. That you really were dead. Especially when I saw your body. And then you showed up a minute later."
Hoodwink didn't know what to say to that, so he squeezed more gel from the metallic packet he'd purloined from hydroponics. He still didn't have an appetite, but he forced himself to eat, knowing he'd need energy in the hours to come. The gel was bland. Tasteless. Even so, it served its purpose. Nutrients were nutrients, no matter how you looked at it. And the acid in your belly turned everything into gel anyway. Shit looked the same no matter if you ate cuts of prime meat or worm-ridden bread.
"The fact you came back gives me hope that Ari can, too," Tanner said. "Is she like you, in that sense?"
Hoodwink sighed. Ari. How he wished she were here. "No. Ari's not like me. She can't come back the same way. But there may be another path for her. It's a slim hope, and a risky one, but I have to try. I wouldn't be doing my duty if I didn't." Hoodwink offered the packet to Tanner, who refused. "You really should eat, Tanner."
"Not hungry." Tanner gazed at the window and the starry sky beyond. "I'm just glad that you care enough about Ari to save her."
"Of course I bloody care. She's my daughter!" And I owe her for what I did to her.
Tanner gave him a strange look. "You know that genetically she's nothing like you, right? Born from the ovum and ejaculate of parents long dead..."
"Yes yes," Hoodwink snapped. "I'm familiar with all that. But you know exactly what I meant. I raised her. Raised her. You try bringing up a child, wiping its arse, cleaning its snot, calming it down when it's yelling its brains out—see if you don't get attached."
"That doesn't sound very attaching to me. Cleaning its snot?"
Hoodwink cleared his throat. "Er, yes, well. Look. What I meant was, there's both good and bad when you raise a child. When you put the time in, and I mean really put the time in, you bond with her. Through the good times. Through the bad times. You bond. And it's the bond that makes the father, regardless of genetics. I'll tell you this once, and once only: She's my daughter through and through."
"I hear you, Hoodwink. I won't bring it up again."
"Good," Hoodwink said. "Now eat." He tossed a packet to Tanner.
Tanner shoved the meal aside. He really wasn't going to eat then. "What was she like, before the revising?"
Hoodwink paused.
Tanner must have noticed the guilt in his face, because he said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by it."
"No, it's all right," Hoodwink said. "It's a good question." Though it would hurt to tell it. But if anyone deserved to know her history, it was Tanner. "She was smart, the top of her class. Extremely shy. A quiet girl. Always musing, and reading. She thought long and hard before acting on anything. Sometimes when you asked her something, she'd pause for as long as a minute to answer you, while she thought the question over."
"That's a far cry from the Ari I knew," Tanner said. "The brash, reckless Ari who'd rather act first and think later. And the Ari I knew definitely wasn't shy."
Hoodwink inclined his head. "Might be the revising that changed that. Jeremy promised he'd touch only her memories, but memory makes personality doesn't it? Still, it might've been the ten years since I last saw her that changed her too. Who can say? When you're leader of an outfit like the New Users you're bound to change one way or another. Though brash and reckless definitely doesn't sound like the girl I knew, nor the actions of a good leader. Did you ever consider that maybe, just maybe, she was trying to show off to someone by the name of Tanner?"
Tanner smiled. "Ari." He had a faraway look in his eyes. "I was the one who was always trying to impress her. Trying to show her how smart I was. How I had everything planned out. Though I suppose it's possible she was trying to show off to me as well.
"Not that I blame her, Hoodwink. You have to try holding those fire swords sometime. The sense of power you get is just mind-blowing. You feel like you can do anything
. I really can't blame her for wanting to just rush-in and confront Jeremy that first time. If only it hadn't ended in disaster. She never forgave herself for the death of Marks. It's why she sacrificed herself for me, I think, in the end. The guilt was killing her inside. I just wish I could've saved her. We had a thing going, Ari and I. A good thing."
Hoodwink sympathized, although he wasn't all that happy to learn Ari and Tanner had a "thing" going. Hoodwink squeezed the last of the gel from the packet and slurped it perhaps a little too loudly. Tanner didn't seem to notice.
"Set up the motion detectors to pull us out," Hoodwink said. "I don't want any uninvited guests taking a dump on our parade."
"Neither do I," Tanner said. "Me and Ari learned that the hard way last time."
Hoodwink ordered Tanner to close the blast shield as well, since there'd be no one to revive them if the room depressurized. All it would take was an unlucky shot from the attackers above, or a couple of iron golems working in concert outside, and that window would crack right open, leaving Hoodwink and Tanner to wake up dead.
He watched the metal shield close over the window, forming a snug fit over the glass. He supposed he could've put his helmet back on before going Inside if he really wanted to guarantee his safety, but that seemed like a waste of suit oxygen, and he had need of the spacesuit yet.
Hoodwink strode to a terminal a good distance from Tanner and plugged the tether into the access port on his suit.
"To the Black Den," Hoodwink said. "And the Control Room. Once there, we need to contact the children, get a fix on Brute, and find that disk."
"To the Black Den," Tanner said. His fingers paused above the terminal. "One last thing, Hoodwink. Did you really sell Ari to Jeremy all those years ago? Did you really accept money for her revision?"
Hoodwink stiffened. "No." He initiated the entry protocol himself, and the world blinked.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hoodwink appeared in a tight alleyway. It was cold. He'd forgotten how positively frigid the Inside could be. Each exhale brought a plume of white mist from his mouth, and he shivered.
Snowdrifts lined either side, forming a concave path of sorts, the ground a bumpy mass of snowpack. The unshoveled drifts had piled up over the years, so much so that the tops climbed halfway up the mudbrick buildings on either side. Strictly speaking, those drifts should've reached even higher given the snowstorms that plagued this place, but some automated A.I. clean-up process prevented that from happening.
There was a vagrant here, seated against the drift. He was swaddled in disintegrating furs, and suckled a leather bladder. The vagrant glanced up at Hoodwink.
"The fuck did you come from?" the vagrant said, breath misting.
Ah, the Inside. How I've missed you.
"Want a drink?" The vagrant offered up the leather bladder and grinned stupidly. Hoodwink could have almost believed him a gol. Except there were no gol vagrants in the world.
Hoodwink reached into his pocket and tossed the man a small purse. The vagrant started when he heard the clink of coins. Hoodwink winked at him, remembering a time when he'd avoided such men like the plague.
Ari had taught him the folly of his ways.
Hoodwink proceeded across the bumpy snowpack toward the front of the alley. He wondered briefly where the tracker was hidden, and when he didn't spot an obvious location, he thought he might have made some mistake.
When he reached the front of the alley, Hoodwink's fears were confirmed. This wasn't the Black Den, though he wasn't far off. He recognized the crowded aisles and kiosks of Happy-Tot Square, a misnomer if there ever was one. Located smack-dab between Luckdown and Black Den, the square was always jammed with customers, the kind of folks who liked to buy their goods for the cheapest price possible, no questions asked. And since the public wasn't allowed into the Den itself, those Denizens with something to offload were happy to come here.
Tanner appeared at his side.
"So this is the right spot after all," Hoodwink said. Tanner wouldn't have appeared near Hoodwink if the tracker wasn't here somewhere.
"It is."
"There's no Control Room," Hoodwink said.
"There isn't."
Hoodwink smiled ironically. "Mind explaining why that is, then?"
Tanner shrugged. "Apparently the Black Faction, or the New Users, moved the tracker we had on the Control Room Box. It's a problem me and Ari have had before, unfortunately. We can go back Outside if you want, and try again with the coordinates of the tracker in the Dwarf's collar."
Hoodwink shrugged. "Probably faster just to walk to the Den. Besides, I haven't been to these parts in years, and I'd like to get a feel for the lay of the land."
"I don't know, Hood," Tanner said. "The gate guards gave us trouble last time."
"Come on. It'll be fun."
And so the pair made their way across Happy-Tot square. Hoodwink felt immensely at ease here among the criminals and their customers. These were the kind of folks he'd grown up with. At least they were honest about what they did, unlike those who called themselves merchants and portal traders, thieves of a different name.
Still, despite his ease, he realized that many of the hawkers were giving him hard looks. Too many. Though his cloak hid the numbers on his chest, and he wore a fake bronze bitch, these men could recognize the perfect face of a gol. Most of the city soldiers and guards were gols, as were the jailers and judges. The average man here had been arrested two or three times in his life, more than enough to pick out the smooth face of a gol from a mile away.
A wiry thug with two X-shaped scars beneath his cheeks spat at Hoodwink's feet.
Hoodwink ignored the man and kept walking. That was the best policy when dealing with these sorts. Keep to yourself, never take offense, don't look too long at any one man, and walk with purpose.
He realized that Tanner had remained behind. Hoodwink turned around to find him scowling at the wiry man.
The hawker scrambled to his feet of course, abandoning the stolen sheafs of cloth that were laid out on the cart behind him. Such men didn't back down from obvious challenges, gol or no gol. "Got a problem, gol?"
"Let it go, Tanner," Hoodwink said.
"These people need to learn manners," Tanner said. "And I mean to start teaching them."
Hoodwink watched Tanner reach for his sword belt, except it wasn't there. Tanner and Hoodwink had elected not to bring weapons so as not to offend the Denizens. A gol with a sword in the Black Den? That'd draw trouble like a sneak to a purse.
"I said, got a problem, gol?" The wiry man advanced until he stood nose-to-nose with Tanner. "Come to arrest me, have ya?"
"Tanner..." Hoodwink said.
Tanner finally backed down, to Hoodwink's relief.
Hoodwink glanced over his shoulder as he led Tanner away. The wiry man was wearing a smug look, and he made a rude finger gesture. If Hoodwink and Tanner got this sort of treatment here, he wondered how they'd be treated in the actual Den.
Not that he was all that worried.
"I don't know what got into me," Tanner said suddenly. "I apologize, Hood. You know I'm never like that. I guess... I guess I'm still in a black mood, after what happened to Ari. Her death is eating away at me, and—"
Hoodwink smiled wanly. "A different subject, if you would?"
"Sorry Hood." Tanner walked on in silence.
The Den lay just ahead. Hoodwink recognized the wall of mortared stone, which was around three times the height of a man. Sellblades and bowmen patrolled the upper walkways, men who were visible only when they passed between the merlons topping the wall. Sometimes the Black Faction hung the severed heads of individuals from competing factions upon those merlons. Hoodwink could still see a few blood stains under the crenelations. You couldn't clean something like that.
The Denizens kept the drifts shoveled well away from the wall, the snow piled into ramparts that ran four paces in front of it. Took dedication, maintaining that.
As for the wall itsel
f, its surface had been ground down so that few fingerholds remained. If a human or gol did manage to scale that wall—via ropes and grappling hooks and whatnot—by the time they made it halfway they'd find themselves chock-full of arrows, more porcupines than men.
A mini-Forever Gate, Hoodwink thought.
Still, determined attackers could find a way through. Gol sappers could setup shop inside one of the many nearby houses and start undermining the wall. And while the Forever Gate was untouchable as far as bombs went, a well-placed bomb would work wonders here. And there were other ways for gols to get inside. What about the gol dogs, cats, and ravens of the world? Ravens. He glanced up. Sure enough, a murder of the black crows toured the sky.
An archway interrupted the smoothness of that wall, and offered the only entrance into the Den. Sealed by a portcullis, Hoodwink recalled that the gate was only opened at set times during the day. He couldn't remember the precise times, but even so he wasn't about to sit around and wait.
He was Hoodwink, after all. And he had a name to live up to.
He crossed the embankment of snow and strode right up to the gate.
The thick bars were closely set, with enough room for a small cat to squeeze through. Even with his gol strength, he knew he wouldn't be able to bend those bars.
"Come on then!" Hoodwink shouted inside. "Who's running this gong show?"
A sentry emerged from a gatehouse beyond the portcullis, and he strolled up to the gate. A leathery patchwork of a man with a bent nose and cragged scars crisscrossing his face, he'd seen his share of action. Street brawlers were the favorite inductees for the Den guard. He held a pike in one hand, and the way he moved suggested he knew how to use it.
The sentry glanced at Hoodwink and Tanner, and he was about to turn away. But then he did a double-take.
"Gols!" The sentry brought the pike to bear, aiming at Hoodwink.
Pikemen congregated behind the gate right quick. Bowmen rushed to the crenels above and knocked their arrows. Hard men, all of them.
