The Sapphire Shadow

by James Wake

  “Well, we’ll take it,” he said. Huge man, as tall as Jackson. They were all enormous up here, the suited goons that patrolled the hallways of the upper levels. “Shit, we just lost Parker.”

  Vicks waved them forward, marching on like they belonged there, leaving the suited guard yelling something about converging on target location. A squad of Domes dashed past, going the other direction, not even giving them a second look.

  “Still haven’t figured out how to handle her, huh?” Wedge said.

  “It’s not her,” Vicks said. “She’d be dead ten times over if it weren’t for that damn cat screwing with the systems. By the time those guys get down there, she’ll be long gone.”

  Jackson almost asked him if he was so sure about that—she had a feeling those two weren’t on the best of terms at the moment. Before she could speak, her knees gave out mid-step, the fibers buried in her legs seizing up and twitching.

  Somehow she stayed standing, limping and shuffling for a few steps. Not now. Not tonight. Sure, her poor body had been through a lot in the last few hours—her chest still ached, sharp tears stabbing with every heartbeat. Her numb legs forced through it until she felt them again.

  Just a little longer.

  “Hang on,” Vicks said, pausing at the end of a hallway. He held his hand to his helmet again, a leftover habit. After a few tense seconds, another squad of Domes led by a suit passed them at the double, heavy troopers clunking along after them in their armored rigs.

  Seconds passed. Vicks raised his hand and beckoned on, taking a corner to see a heavy door.

  “Auxiliary access stairwell 1B,” he said. “Still not right to the top but getting closer.”

  He stepped forward, almost walking into the door when it failed to open. The green light on the reader turned red, along with several hallway lights above them. A display on the wall next to the door changed from a map to a calm warning in a pleasant font, assuring them that everything was under control and to please remain where they were.

  “Shit,” Wedge said, turning to watch their backs. “Vicks?”

  “It’s not me,” he said, touching buttons in thin air. “They’re locking down everything up here. Wow, everything. Getting desperate.”

  Jackson eyed the door’s hardware, then the hinges. She had a few breaching rounds on her belt. It had been a long time since she’d done it, but it wasn’t an easy thing to forget.

  “Don’t,” Vicks said, clearly eyeballing her through his helmet.

  “What?”

  “I see you thinking it. Diffusive core on all the hardware. Trust me. Not gonna work.”

  “You got a better idea?” Wedge said.

  The display flickered, replaced with a toothy-grinned cat.

  “Officer Jackson!” she heard in her ears. Not the many-voiced monster from before—this was a young woman’s voice. Familiar.

  “I might need your help upstairs,” Tess said. The door’s reader turned green, in perfect time with the cat’s face winking at them from the display.

  “What the hell?” Vicks said.

  “Tell your inside man he’s a real peach,” Tess said. “He and I should talk.”

  “Is that Cheshire?” Vicks said.

  “Yup.” Jackson clapped him on the shoulder. “I think she likes you.”

  “Wait. She?”

  * * *

  This one saw her coming.

  Another thick-necked man in a trim black suit, with dark glasses hiding glimmering dots of a HUD. He reached for his belt, his mouth opening to bark out the alarm.

  Nadia leapt at the wall to his side, kicking off it and grabbing him in a spinning, crackling takedown. It didn’t quite work—he dropped his pistol halfway through drawing it, grunting and falling to one knee.

  Tough, these brutes on the upper levels. She gripped his collar tightly in one hand, sweeping her other elbow into the back of his shaved head—once, twice, and again until he went limp—then took his face in her hands and electrified them for good measure.

  “Yow,” Tess said. “Do you know that guy or something?”

  Nadia said nothing, moving on silently. She did not, in fact, know him. They were all the same to her, her mother’s suited goons. As faceless as the Domes.

  “Let’s see,” Tess said, “Arnold Parker, thirty-three, father of two. Former Federal Marine. Moved here about six years ago and—”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “I’m sorry,” Tess said, sounding nowhere near it, “is this making you uncomfortable?”

  “Perhaps you should read me some of the backgrounds of men you’ve killed. In the spirit of sharing and openness.”

  “See, that’s the difference between you and me. I embrace who I am, what I’m fighting for. What I have to do.”

  Again Nadia remained silent, a bitter scowl hidden behind the mask. For a moment, the revolver hidden in her bag felt heavy, a dense weight straining her back.

  “Sorry,” Tess said, after a long, tense pause on the channel. “Speaking of, you mind telling me exactly what your plan is when you get to the top? How you’re gonna do this thing?”

  “Do you have a layout for this floor yet?”

  Tess sighed. A floor plan lit up in the corner of Nadia’s HUD, with highlighted elements appearing through walls in her vision.

  Almost there.

  “Hoo boy,” Tess said, “lots of chatter on their comms about that bike you left downstairs. They know it was Dave’s. Things are about to get real wild.”

  That was fine. She had only been borrowing the bike. She would not be needing the bike.

  “They’ve locked it up. You have a different plan for leaving, right?” Tess said. “Or like, any kind of plan?”

  A feed from downstairs played for Nadia as she crept through well-lit hallways and ducked around patrolling drones. Far below, her blond twin was being ushered offstage by a security detail, scowling as she cut her microphone.

  That got a smile out of Nadia at least.

  “I’ve got Theseus on a holding pattern nearby. Shouldn’t be too long if you need—” Tess started to say.

  “How close am I?”

  Another long sigh crept through the tiny plugs in her ears. “One last elevator to the top,” Tess said, highlighting a wireframe of a shaft in Nadia’s vision. “The stairs aren’t pretty.”

  More feeds crowding her vision. Domes taking up position in a stairwell, guns ready, bolting chest-high barricades to the landings at regular intervals. Elevator shaft it was then. Nadia crawled through another drone service tunnel, wriggling on her belly, feeling sharp stabbing pains where bullets had marked the sleek skin of her suit.

  “So, uh…apropos of nothing,” Tess said, her usual snark stilted and cautious, “a lot of my problems with our particular cultural moment are the result of overarching institutions. You know, systemic issues.”

  “Yes,” Nadia said, “you’ve never been a fan of the system, I know.”

  “I mean, a change of leadership sounds great and all, but it’ll take much more than that for long-lasting, meaningful improvement.”

  “Who said anything about meaningful improvement?” Nadia said, gingerly lowering her weight onto the top of an elevator car.

  Dark empty space loomed above her, nothing but twisted steel cables leading up. She cycled through vision modes until she saw them. Tight grids of red lasers every few feet on the way up, nets waiting to catch her and alert every guard in the Structure to her exact location.

  “High-profile assassinations aren’t your style,” Tess said. “That’s amateur stuff. Ultimately pointless.”

  “Weren’t you the one just trying to convince me that violence isn’t all that bad?” Nadia tiptoed to the edge of the car and checked along one wall. Barely an inch of space before the lasers began. Impossible to slip through.

  “I see them. I’m working on it. And listen,
I know it’s a sticky issue,” Tess said. “We can argue all night about whether violence is justified against authoritarianism. Trust me, personally on like, an emotional level, I’m with you.”

  “You certainly sound like it.”

  Tess heaved a sigh. “Ugh, sarcasm. I’m trying to be real with you.” She paused and added, “For once.”

  “Could you be real while disabling those lasers?”

  “So impatient. One more second, and…got it.”

  The grid flickered and sputtered, blinking out for a moment but coming back just as strong.

  “I suppose you don’t think personal vendetta is a good reason for violence?” Nadia said. “Not that it’s relevant, what with these lasers in the way.”

  “Working on it,” Tess said. “I thought you were above that kind of thing, that’s all.”

  Cute. It wouldn’t work, though. Nadia narrowed her eyes at the words, her smirk fading as the security grids flickered again, still in her way. “No human is above such motivations. Not even yourself.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” A pause. “Damn it!” Tess yelled. This time the grid had stayed down for a few full seconds.

  “It’s never occurred to you that your little resistance is just you acting out against a society that has mistreated you?” Nadia said, biting her lip at the next thought. No, no time for cowardice, not anymore. “Acting out against people like me?”

  Tess’s low grumbling as the lasers flickered stopped short, interrupted by a bitter laugh. “Nice try. You really think I’m only doing all this because you snubbed me in high school? Self-absorbed much?”

  “I sincerely hope you mean that.” Nadia eyed the counterweight, sticking one gloved hand to the thick steel cable that led up from the elevator car. “Can you make them go out for only a few seconds again?”

  “I’m trying! They’ve got some new failsafe routine, really interesting if it weren’t pissing me off so much right now…”

  Her cutter whined to life, exactly like Tess’s blade. Nadia reached down, feeling an aching tear where a hole in her suit’s skin was sealed over with silver gel. The small blade easily slipped through the steel cable.

  The elevator shook beneath her feet, the emergency cable groaning as it was pulled taut.

  “Whoa! Careful. What are you doing?” Tess said.

  “Say when,” Nadia said, the glowing blade inches from the emergency cable.

  “That’s not going to—”

  “Don’t you ever get sick of telling me that? I’m cutting the cable.”

  “Wait!”

  Nadia fancied that she could hear Tess frantically typing, her fingers blurry at her sides.

  “Okay, ready?” Tess said.

  “I’ve been ready, dear.”

  “Now!”

  Almost as bad as a ripline—her left arm yanked upward, screaming against her shoulder joint. It surely would have been dislocated if not for the synthetic muscles. Nadia’s right hand wasn’t sticky at the moment, foolishly, and the cutter went flying into darkness as she flew up, wind screaming against her mask.

  The laser grids flickered out into nothingness as the cable led her up, pulling her through the dark shaft, rising through the last few dozens of feet to the very top of the Structure.

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Family

  FOUR YEARS PRIOR

  The elevator door opened for her.

  Nadia stepped through, the heels on her boots echoing through the pristine marble-floored lobby. Plants surrounded her. Plants. Dreadful. At one point, works of precious art, fine paintings, had been hung on every wall. Priceless originals.

  All gone now. Her mother, Evelyn, hadn’t even waited until Nadia’s father was dead. Just as she hadn’t been able to carry her daughters to full term and had them surgically removed as early as possible. As soon as they were inconvenient. Nadia might as well have been grown in an incubator.

  She held out one pale hand with long, brightly painted nails, each finger sporting a different shade of blue, and flicked at an errant fern that wasn’t remotely in her way. The stalk broke, probably the last specimen of its kind, and breathlessly floated in the air before drooping toward the floor.

  Nadia didn’t even slow down, didn’t give the wretched thing a second look. Her pleased grin didn’t last long. The inner doors opened before her.

  Chin up. Back straight. Show no weakness.

  She didn’t quite manage it. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d slept, the smell of hoverbike exhaust the only thing really clear in her memories of last night.

  “Ah, my eldest daughter,” Evelyn said. Sitting at the head of the table, an empty seat next to her. Dressed in an immaculate white suit, always, any trace of silver in her hair eradicated with blond dye. She didn’t even look up; her pupils were glazed over. “Home at last.”

  Words grumbled out of Nadia’s lips, low curses that might have been mistaken for the word mother at a distance.

  “How many vehicles have I purchased for you now?” Evelyn said, flicking through an interface invisible to everyone else in the room. “And you still insist on bringing home garbage to be disposed of?”

  So her new bike was already gone. Nadia scowled, not talking back. It was a scrapped-together racing bike, light and fast and painted in a racket of neon hues. She had won that bike, fair and proper, through her own skill and cunning. That alone made it worth more than every vehicle in her stable put together.

  When Nadia’s mother finally did blink and turn down the light in her implants to look over, her face fell into a scowl. “I suppose you think this is clever somehow? Ruining your hair like that?”

  She had thought that actually. Nadia tossed her newly black hair over one shoulder, waiting for more—she had made a point of not changing before arriving, still sporting torn fishnets and tall boots and her very favorite black racing jacket.

  “You will bleach that out after this,” Evelyn said. “I won’t have you wasting our genes like that. Not after the hundreds of thousands of dollars I spent on your embryo, ensuring you would bear the family color.”

  That was all? Nadia slid her shades lower on her nose, trying to show off the stinging in her eyes. She’d checked in the elevator, pleased at how horribly bloodshot they were, pupils blown out wide until her blue irises were scant slim crescents.

  “Take your seat, Nadia.”

  Fine then. Nadia huffed and stomped and made a show of collapsing into her chair, slouching for maximum effect. Her sister watched with ill-concealed disgust, seated across from her at perfect, obedient attention. Her transformation wasn’t quite complete, back then, still somewhat her own person, still sporting her own haircut, golden strands pulled back in an elegant and showy bun.

  Traitorous little bitch. It hadn’t been all that long ago that her little sister had begged Nadia to let her come along, to sneak outside the Structure. To hang out with, as Nadine had put it, “the bad poor kids.”

  Nadine’s nose curled, a delicate hand held to her mouth to cover a dainty, gagging cough.

  “Something the matter?” Nadia said.

  Nadine lowered her eyes to the table. “You smell.”

  She had also made a point of not showering. At least that was what she’d told herself—much of the last day was a haze, so much so that she wasn’t even sure if the offending smell was sex or drugs or both or neither.

  There was a certain pleasant soreness, more so than bike racing could usually account for. Shame she could barely remember it. Both it was then.

  Evelyn Ashpool cleared her throat, stiffening in her chair in a very unfamiliar way. “Since you are both finally here…”

  “Mother?” Nadine said. “I’ve been waiting here for hours!”

  “Interrupt me again and I will have you locked down on the ground level until this is over.”

  Part of Nadia wanted to relish it, wante
d to find delight in her sister’s look of beaten terror, in the way her hands slammed into her lap and pulled her eyes with them. That part of her also made her feel nauseous.

  “Nothing I am about to say should come as a surprise to either of you,” Evelyn said. “This is…not a pleasant occasion.”

  Nadia lowered her shades again, squinting through the burning scrape of her eyelids, looking for anything on her mother’s face. Nothing. Blank and stiff, like a procedurally generated actor. She’d had so much surgery. The only expression her face really could make was disdain.

  “Seeing as our greatest technical minds have, so far, failed in their stated mission,” Evelyn said, glaring over her shoulder and raising her voice enough for the men in the back of the room to hear her, “we will be taking all appropriate measures to preserve your father.”

  Not a surprise. They had talked about this. It was not news. There was no reason for Nadia to feel sick, no reason to feel like she was plummeting through her chair. She was coming down, that was all, finally crashing after the high of racing through the streets, nerves buzzing with all manner of controlled substances.

  More words, low and drawled. Mish-mash. Muddled nonsense. Everything in the room blurred and flickered in Nadia’s tired eyes. She felt her head bobbing, felt herself collapsing to the floor but still slouching in her chair, her head shrinking to nothing as the room around her expanded into an endless…

  No. She shook her head, blinking things back into focus. A small tube was in one of her inside jacket pockets, her fingers already desperately prying it free. A present from a fellow racer. Nice girl. Probably just trying to curry favor, trying to suck up to Nadia like all the rest. Deceitful, lying peasant. She’d said Nadia could keep it. Nadia had refused, handing it back only to pickpocket it later.

  Making no effort to hide what she was doing, she stuck the end of it up one nostril, pushed the button, and breathed in the lovely click-hiss of…whatever it was. A shivering prickle ran up her sinuses and all through her head, fizzling down to the tips of her hair.

  Much better. The room was the boardroom again, no sickly wavering in the air. Evelyn had stopped talking. Lo and behold, in a miracle of sorts, she was using her face to express a real, genuine emotion toward Nadia.