Sketches

by Teyla Branton

  “Get up,” she said to the girl.

  The girl’s eyes radiated hatred or embarrassment, or maybe both. But she smoothed down her skirt, covering her scrawny legs, and obeyed.

  “What are you doing here?” Reese asked.

  The child’s chin lifted, jutting outward. “I’m not here to hurt you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Jaxon bent and retrieved a knife that had slid under the couch. “Oh? And what’s this for?”

  “Protection,” she spat at him. “From people like you.” She thumbed at Reese. “This is between me and her.”

  “No,” Jaxon said. “It’s not. The minute you cut that glass, it became enforcer business.”

  The girl paled noticeably.

  “I’ll talk to her,” Reese said. “Give us a minute.”

  Jaxon appeared to consider a few seconds before nodding sharply and heading to the glass door, where he disappeared onto the balcony. A little of the anxiety inside Reese ebbed. He would make sure the girl was alone and that some unseen danger didn’t lurk outside. How had the child gotten up to the fourth floor anyway?

  “Have a seat.” Reese motioned to the couch with her gun. She waited until the girl was perched on one side of the couch before sinking to the chair opposite her, gun resting on her knee where it wouldn’t be forgotten by her captive.

  Signaling her Teev feed, Reese brought a holo menu to life over the coffee table. She pulled it closer with a dragging motion and activated an ID scanner. She wasn’t surprised to see the girl didn’t carry a CivID, either an implant or a card. There was also no faint vibration picked up by the program, which would indicate that she was using a blocker. Reese killed the feed.

  “Who are you?” Reese asked.

  “You can call me Nova.” From her tone, it was definitely not her real name.

  Reese glanced at the balcony door to check on Jaxon’s progress, but with the light on inside, she caught only a tiny bit of his movements through the glass. “Okay, Nova, so why are you here? I tried to talk to you yesterday at the Fountain, but you ran off. Not the best way to react if you have nothing to hide. And I doubt breaking in here is your way of making it up.”

  The girl tensed and leaned forward, her brown eyes wild. “You can’t show no one that picture you drew of those men. I didn’t tell you nothin’, but saying I did is going to get me killed. El Cerebro already asked me why a clipper was nosing around with my image on a receptor. I know what those men who dumped the dead guy are—and I know what happens to people who cross them.” She spoke the last words with distaste and an obvious curl to her lips.

  Reese settled back in her chair, feigning relaxation, hoping it would transfer to the girl. Nova was so tense, Reese was afraid she might run to the balcony and jump off just to get away. She studied the girl for a minute, noting the cracked bottom lip and the blackening eye Jaxon had given her, both half hidden under the sweeping mess of her ratted curls. “I’m not sure what you mean. Enforcers are here to protect people, not hurt them.”

  “Only if we do what they say!” The words exploded from Nova in a rush. “You have it good in your cushy job, pushing people around. But every year the CORE’s grip gets stronger, chokin’ us till there’s nothing left. You want food, you have to do what they say—even if that means going to the Desolation Zone for tech they’re just gonna take from you. You want a doctor, well, you’d better not be talking out against them. And if you’re too sick or it will cost too much money, they just send you off to die. You want sex? Well, go ahead as long as you have the implant—’cuz only they can have kids—until they need more workers. If you don’t want to do what they say, you end up in a colony, slaving away till you die.” She finished, staring at Reese with a clear challenge in her eyes.

  Reese ignored it. “How did you find me?”

  “I followed you yesterday.”

  If she was telling the truth, Nova was an excellent tracker. “That’s interesting,” Reese said, “because you’re not the first person to come after me with a knife.” With her free hand, she lifted the edge of her shirt to show the bandage on her side.

  Nova displayed no surprise, but seeing the bandage seemed to take some of the steam from her anger. Her shoulders curled in slightly, as if protecting her own body. “That wasn’t me.”

  “But you were there.” No answer. “You know who it was?”

  The girl shook her head. “I can ask around. See if I can find out anything. But only if you lose that paper you drew.”

  “You’d do that? Informing can be dangerous.”

  “Depends who you’re informing on. Those guys last night aren’t part of any crew I know. Once I tell El Cerebro about them, he’s going to want to find them too. They got guts going after you like that, and we need more people for the fight.”

  “The fight? Against CORE?”

  Nova swallowed noisily and didn’t answer, apparently realizing she’d admitted too much. “I don’t know anything about El Cerebro. I’m just one of his punks when I need money.” Her gaze drifted to the bowl of pretzels and then back to Reese. “You got enemies, or your partner does,” she said. “If you want me to help, you gotta say it was someone else who gave you the information about the dead guy. If they find me . . .” She trailed off, glancing toward the door as if realizing more enforcers might already be on their way. “Please,” she said. “I don’t want to go back to the colony. My dad died getting me out of there.”

  As suspected, Nova was an orphan, and Reese couldn’t help feeling a little bit of a connection with her. “How did he die?”

  A sudden ugliness transformed Nova’s face. “The CORE killed him. Might as well have been you.”

  “The CORE doesn’t kill people.”

  Nova stared at her. “You really believe that? Then you’re a bigger idiot than I thought.”

  Despite the futility, Reese couldn’t let that stand. “CORE rules are strict so nothing like Breakdown ever happens again. They only want us to succeed.” But even as she spoke, Reese remembered the fear on her father’s face and the picture she’d drawn of the mysterious visitor to Jaxon’s house. The stranger had been talking on the public Teev, an obvious member of the CORE Elite, but he’d slunk out to Jaxon’s house like some punk on a self-gratifying errand. Not exactly the actions of a strong leader representing the CORE that had trained her and given her purpose.

  A shiver passed through her.

  Nova stood. “This was a mistake. I gotta leave.”

  Reese didn’t move except to adjust her grip on the gun. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do that yet. I have a few more questions.”

  “Well, I don’t got any answers.” Nova’s eyes went to the gun and then to the door, as if calculating her chances.

  “Sit down,” Jaxon said. They both looked to the glass door where Jaxon had reappeared with a rifle and a harness of some sort. “I said, sit down,” he repeated.

  Nova’s stare pleaded, but Reese pointed to the couch, and the girl plopped back down on it.

  “Have some pretzels while I have a word with my partner,” Reese said, coming to her feet. Nova hesitated all of two seconds before diving forward and plunging both hands into the bowl.

  Reese went around the couch to meet Jaxon, and together they moved closer to the kitchen doorway for privacy. He held up the gun and harness, glancing over at the child as she stuffed her mouth. “Never seen any tech like this before. From what I can tell, the gun launches a large metal dart that digs into the side of the building and becomes part of it. Literally. Must contain nanites that change the structure, making a seamless bond. Took me most of the time out there to figure out how to separate it from the wall by your balcony. The dart is attached to this fine cable and the harness, which has a motor of some kind.” He turned the harness to show her a box the size of his fist. “I suppose it could have been common pre-Breakdown, but I haven’t come across any motor this small that could lift a human four flights from the ground.”

  “
You think she’s been out to a Desolation Zone?”

  “Could be.”

  “But she’d know turning it in would net her a tidy profit,” Reese said. “Why would she hold on to it?”

  “Guess that’s a question for her, but something tells me Little Miss Techie over there is hiding a lot more than what she saw yesterday at the Fountain.”

  “You think she’s in contact with fringers?” Reese thought it might be a possibility. Rumors about fringer tech had pervaded as far as New York.

  “I think if she’d had a run-in with fringers, she wouldn’t be here. I’ve never actually met anyone who has returned after meeting up with those crazies.”

  “Where else could she have gotten the tech? El Cerebro?”

  Jaxon appeared to like that suggestion. “If she works for him, she might have access to some of his stuff.”

  “Maybe it’s time to ask her.”

  “I don’t suppose she’s carrying a CivID?”

  “No, and she has to know that’s normally a mandatory arrest. I’m not sure she’s thinking at all coming here like this.” Reese started back to the sitting area, where she noticed all the pretzels were gone, most likely into the pockets of Nova’s skirt. Pity tugged at Reese, but she pushed it aside. The CORE had methods of caring for children; if Nova lived on the street at the beck and call of some black market thug, she did it by choice.

  “Where’d you get that?” Reese thumbed at the harness Jaxon set down on the coffee table.

  Nova swallowed a mouthful of pretzel. “Found it.”

  “You’ve been out in the Desolation Zone?” Reese knew that if she had, they’d need to do more than send her to enhancement. She might be sick with radiation fever—maybe that’s why she’d come here like this when she had to know they couldn’t let her go.

  The girl’s eyes widened, and for the first time, Reese detected a sign of fear. A fear that went beyond breaking into an enforcer’s apartment in the middle of the night.

  “No.” Her voice was breathless. “I don’t ever go into the desolation zones. I’m not an idiot.”

  A sketch came to Reese from the girl, an image of a man, his face a mass of blisters. Fascinating and repelling all at once. She casually reached for the sketchbook she’d left on the coffee table from the meeting earlier, sat down in her chair, and began to draw. The lines came so fast that she gave up a little bit of precision to succumb to speed. Sad eyes, hair only in splotches, open sores on his face. A monster. And yet there was a humanity about him, a sense of accomplishment and resignation.

  “Look, I stole the launcher and harness from El Cerebro,” Nova said. “If I don’t bring it back, he’ll kill me. I just came to ask you not to tell about that paper.”

  Reese finished the drawing and set it on the table next to the pretzel bowl in front of Nova. The girl leaned forward and gasped. “Dad!” So much pain and longing in the word. The pain, at least, Reese understood.

  “Tell me about your father,” Reese said.

  Nova blinked rapidly. “You already know if you have that.” Her eyes strayed to the page once more, and her jaw clenched as she struggled to maintain control.

  Reese kept quiet, sensing there was more.

  “Tell us,” Jaxon urged.

  Nova’s jaw clenched and unclenched. She stared up at Jaxon with hatred in her eyes. “They killed him! They made him go into the Desolation Zone. He brought back tech—again and again and again. He got sick and he still went. Then he died.” A few of the threatening tears escaped her eyes. “The CORE killed my father, and I will never forgive them.”

  The girl had to be lying, of course. The CORE had forbidden anyone to enter the Desolation Zones for their own protection. Authorities did confiscate tech from anyone who entered on their own. For the good of everyone.

  “Did you get this harness from your father?” Jaxon asked.

  “No. He’s dead! I already told you!” Nova jumped up, her fists clenched.

  “Nova,” Reese said. “Why would your father keep going into the Desolation Zones? Did someone really make him? Was it El Cerebro?” Nova wouldn’t be the first victim to blame the CORE for a crime someone else had committed.

  Nova’s lips trembled. “He did it to get me out of Colony 4.” The heat left her eyes and her voice grew quiet. “He did it to save me.”

  “Was there something wrong at Colony 4?” Reese thought of the crews in the Coop and how dangerous they had been. “I know things can be difficult in the colonies, but they are designed to take care of people until they can support themselves outside. You know that.”

  “What I know,” Nova said, “is that everyone I ever loved besides my father died from poisoning while processing the plastics at Colony 4. And I know that no one ever leaves a colony. Not ever.”

  “I did,” Reese said. “And so did my partner.”

  Nova slowly sank again to the couch. “Then you’re from Colony 6.”

  The odd tone in her voice was disturbing. “How did you know that?” Reese’s gaze flicked to Jaxon and back to Nova.

  “Because those are the only ones who ever left.” Nova sighed deeply and long, as if releasing her upset emotions. “Forget it. Can I go now? Or are you gonna lock me up and cut out a piece of my brain?”

  Reese exchanged another look with Jaxon, feeling guilty that enhancement might be exactly where this child was headed. Psychological reconditioning alone often wouldn’t overcome such volatile emotions, and with the extreme hatred Nova had for CORE, she might never become a contributing citizen without medical interference.

  “You know we can’t let you go.” Jaxon was standing with one hand shoved in a pocket, the other dangling near his holstered gun. “You broke into a private residence with a weapon, throwing around claims about the CORE and colonies like a fringer-loving lumper waiting for rescue. What I don’t understand is what you hoped to gain from it. Why are you here? What if I’d shot you? Then what?”

  By the way Nova held suddenly still, Reese knew Jaxon had her attention. Her words when they came had lost much of her defiance. “I-I came to ask her not to show the picture.”

  “Try again,” Reese said.

  Nova’s jaw jutted out as she turned her hateful stare at Reese. “Fine. I came to give you the real story about what I saw. In exchange for you keeping my name out of it, and only if you stop looking for me. If you bring me in, I’m as good as dead.”

  “The CORE doesn’t kill people,” Reese repeated.

  Nova glanced between them, her eyes moving rapidly, her expression uneasy. “I didn’t mean them . . . exactly.”

  Reese stored that in her mind to revisit later. “Okay, so what is this real story?” Reese motioned for Jaxon to sit on one of the kitchen chairs that still completed the circle around the coffee table. If he was making her nervous hovering like that, she could only imagine the influence he was having on Nova.

  Nova sat back and folded her arms across her black sweater. “How do I know you’ll let me go afterward?”

  She had a point. Maybe they could make some kind of a deal. Nova was defiant, unconventional, and completely untrustworthy—just like any other informer she’d ever worked with. “Well, that depends. You said you could look into who might have attacked us last night?”

  Nova’s face went completely blank, which seemed odd given that they’d already discussed the possibility. Then the child nodded slowly, as if Reese had asked her to spy on her best friend or enter fringer territory. “Yeah, sure. I can ask around, like I said before. But only if you don’t take me in and get off my back. Plus, I’ll tell you what else I know about the body at the Fountain.”

  Reese had the feeling she’d missed something but couldn’t put a finger on what. At what point had the child changed from eager informant to reluctant participant—at least in regard to the attack last night? “How do I know you’ll keep your end of the bargain once I let you leave?”

  Nova gave an exaggerated shrug. “If I don’t show up when you want to m
eet, you’ll just go after me again, and that’s the last thing I want. I’d rather be dead than have them cut out my brain so I can be a half-witted CORE punk.” She practically spat the last words.

  Reese glanced at Jaxon, who nodded his agreement. “Okay,” Reese said to Nova, “what do you have for me?”

  “It was enforcers that dropped the body yesterday,” Nova spoke in a hush.

  Jaxon shook his head. “We already know the men you saw were wearing enforcer uniforms.” He grabbed the sketchbook, turned back a few pages, and shoved it under her nose. “But you saw this so you already know that. And before you accuse enforcers again, the uniforms don’t mean it was actual enforcers. The uniforms could be copies—or stolen.”

  Nova’s eyes fixed on the drawing, her tongue running over her split lip. “Yeah, but I wasn’t the only one who saw them. A guy in El Cerebro’s crew spotted the black shuttle hightailing it out of town yesterday morning.”

  “How can you be sure it was the same one?”

  “I guess it might be a different one, but it had no vehicle ID—and enforcers were inside. El Cerebro’s guy followed them. El Cerebro pays for good information, so we’re always on the lookout.”

  Jaxon leaned forward suddenly, startling Nova, who jumped in her seat. “You know where they went?”

  “They stopped at a clothing factory down by the river. El Cerebro is having it watched now.”

  She pulled out a device Reese recognized as a knockoff iTeev. Even having one was against the law, but it was a law Reese had never enforced. Growing up in the Coop, black market tech was all anyone had managed to buy.

  “Here’s the address.” Nova pushed a few buttons and her iTeev connected to Reese’s Teev feed, which brought a holo information cube to life. “And that’s all I know. Even if you torture me with a temper laser or tear out my fingernails, I got nothin’ more.”