Black Dawn

by Gorman, K.

  “Not sure. It’s been a while, I think—but then, time kind of runs together sometimes, and she does tend to keep to herself. I’ve gone for months without seeing her before. Doesn’t mean that she’s not in there.” He turned. “She always been like that?”

  She shrugged. “She’s a bit of an introvert.”

  Actually, between the two of them, Karin was more the introvert. Nomiki had no need, other than privacy, to keep to herself. In fact, if she’d found the right crowd—military type, probably—Karin suspected she’d get along just fine.

  Not that introverts were socially inept. She forced that stereotype from her head. She didn’t think she was socially inept, anyway—and, if she was, that probably came more from her weird, isolated childhood and secretive lifestyle rather than any latent introversion.

  “Here we are.” Edson halted beside a door and handed them the code. “I’ll be downstairs if you need.”

  Marc watched him walk away with a raised eyebrow.

  “A bit trusting, isn’t he?” he said once the old man was out of earshot. “He didn’t even ask for our IDs.”

  She shrugged, then stepped in. “Nomiki and I are practically twins.”

  Shade swallowed the room. It wasn’t dark. Like the halls outside, Nomiki’s room had a light, open concept. The short foyer they entered fed into a main living space, with the living, dining room, and kitchen all wrapped into one. Her bedroom was around the corner, doubled back through the living room. The outside wall was nearly all glass, but the sun had long departed that part of the sky. The light that fell through had a blue tinge to it.

  And, even before she called out, she got the feeling they were the only ones here.

  “Miki?” she said, peeking around the corner. “It’s Rin. You here? I’ve brought a friend.”

  Marc followed her in, a quiet, unobtrusive presence.

  “No tape on the door,” he noted after a few seconds. “That’s a good sign, at least.”

  “Unless she’s been abducted for other reasons.” She bit her lip, then shook the thought away. “I doubt that, though.”

  “Are people hunting you? You did say that you had escaped?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on what they wanted with us. We never did find out.” She frowned. “Plus, she killed nearly everyone who had been in the compound during our escape. I’m not sure if they’d think us worth the trouble after that.”

  “Unless they’re looking for revenge,” he said.

  “That revenge would have to come through the gate,” she said.

  “Not impossible, even now—but yes, I see your point.” He scanned the room. “Where do you think she is?”

  “I have no idea. She takes odd jobs. Things more… suitable to her expertise.” She winced. She’d long ago learned to love her sister. That included accepting that Nomiki’s talents lay in places she found abhorrent. “I think I remember her talking about a potential longer-term client, last time…”

  “Military, perhaps?”

  As she stepped down into the room, directing her attention to the side-table where Nomiki liked to keep her computer, Marc took that as invitation to enter the main area. He wandered over to the dining area, casting his gaze across the small breakfast table and then the counter tops. “Everything looks clean. She normally a neat freak?”

  “Yes.” Karin frowned, opening a drawer and skimming the contents, then returning to the desktop. Some folded papers sat on the edge, though they didn’t seem very important. She riffled through them. Advertisements, mostly, though two were notifications of registered mail.

  She frowned. Who even used ground mail, anyway? Had she ordered something for pick-up? Something they couldn’t deliver or leave with the nice elderly man who’d let them in?

  On second thought—yeah, maybe there was a good reason Nomiki might decide to arrange a pick-up, given what she was normally into.

  “Fridge is cleaned out, on standby. Only non-perishables in the cupboards.” Marc poked his head out from around the refrigerator door. “I don’t think she’s here.”

  She abandoned the desk. “Hang on—I’ll check her bedroom.”

  Soft carpet met her feet, and she balked at walking her shoes on it, but she shook the feeling off. The sense of wrong dropped away as she stiffened her back and headed for the bedside.

  Like in the living area, the wall-to-ceiling glass continued. A set of translucent, gauze-pale curtains gave a sense of privacy while also letting in the outside view. The outlines of a few plumeria trees, their branches bare of leaves and flowers during the winter, stretched up to form shadows on the next building over. Yellow flashed into her eyes as the last rays of the setting sun reflected off a window and splashed across the corner of the room. A couple cars sat in spaces below. She wound around the end of the softly-quilted queen bed—gray with silver tinges, to match the unobtrusive carpet—and opened her wardrobe. Then she drew open the drawers of the nearby dresser and checked under the bed.

  About half of Nomiki’s clothes were gone. Along with all her weapons cases.

  Karin pulled herself back on her elbows with a frown.

  Nomiki had gone on a job, then. The only question was—where?

  She made to push herself back up, but paused. The outline of a book tucked up beneath the head of the bed caught her eye. If she squinted, she could make out the faint dips and flashes of loose leaf paper.

  Her eyebrows rose. Paper? In this age? Apart from registered mail, cheap-print fliers, and the very rich, nobody used it anymore.

  She flattened herself to the floor and reached inward, pushing herself half-under the bed. Her fingertips caught the edge of it, and she pulled it closer, hissing through her teeth at the awkward movement.

  It was a notebook—a binder, more specifically—about the size of a netlink screen. She’d seen them at some of the shops. Meant to store photos.

  It didn’t look like Nomiki had followed that purpose. Different papers poked out of the sides, as if someone had stuck a bunch of various-sized sheaves together. She frowned, undid the catch, and let it fall open in her lap.

  Her breath caught at the first page.

  There were photos. Very familiar photos. Of both Nomiki and herself. Others, too. Scientists and doctors, care specialists, the guardians of the compound, all in various poses and actions.

  Where the hell did she manage to find these?

  Her hand stilled as she found the ruins.

  The picture was slightly blurred—probably from age—but the stones were distinct, as was the field they sat in. It must have been late winter or very early spring, because the field was only beginning to come back. If she squinted, she could see a faint hint of green among the brown. She flipped to the next page and found a half-torn piece of yellowed paper tucked into the plastic. Neat, cramped notes filled it, and several sticky notes hung off the side with Nomiki’s distinctive writing on them.

  She froze as she skimmed through to the bottom.

  It was dated last year.

  Had she been keeping things from her? Had she been… investigating?

  Footsteps sounded on the floor outside.

  Karin closed the book and stuffed it into her purse as Marc’s shadow appeared in the doorway. He poked his head around the threshold. “Anything?”

  “She’s gone. Bags packed.” She pushed herself up and turned, then paused as she eyed a piece of paper in his hand. “What’s that?”

  “A clue, perhaps. Found it tagged to the fridge.” He frowned, then held it aloft. “You ever heard of the White Lion Clan?”

  “No.”

  “Local mob group,” he said. “Well—maybe not so local. Last I heard, they’d acquired a gunship and were checking out parts of Belenus. You said your sister specializes in killing people?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then these are the kind of people who’d be looking to hire her.”

  “Ah.” That’s where she’d gone, then. Well, theoretically. The White Lion Clan had a
t least made contact, but Nomiki could have found a different employer. She glanced around the room, her gaze lingering on the bookshelves, then the bed. “Guess there’s no reason to stay here, then.”

  “Sorry you didn’t find her.”

  She moved her attention back to the paper. “That got contact info on it?”

  “Only a name. Probably an agent. They put out feelers.” He frowned. “You planning on going after them?”

  She shook her head as she took it from him.

  “Not right now.” The name flashed into sight—Zenobia Philips—before she folded it into a pocket of her purse and made to leave. “Let’s go find Cookie.”

  Wherever Nomiki was, it wasn’t here. And even if she didn’t have a prior moral obligation to find him, she now needed him. Cookie’s data-mining skills were her best bet of getting her a contact into the organization.

  With one hand on her purse, feeling the curve of the book inside, she walked to the door and led the way out.

  Chapter 24

  Red tape fluttered on Cookie's door, along with a government notice with his photocopied ID, a location, and a number that had been penned in underneath.

  “Nuenbar, huh? He must have been one of the first to be found.” Karin squinted closer. “That's not a phone number.”

  “Probably an ID of some sort.” Marc's lip curled. He stared at the notice for a few more seconds, then lifted his hand to enter the door code. A small clunk sounded as the lock disengaged.

  They ducked under the tape and crept in.

  Lights flickered on inside, and a kind of stuffy, stale air pricked her nose. Cookie lived in one of the newer micro-dorms, a low, long, well-insulated building that ran along the Sky Train's tracks so close that one of its ends had been converted into a station entrance. It wasn't pretty, but it was quiet. With a structure made of concrete, and hallways whose walls and design were the polar opposite of the openness at Nomiki's, it felt like there could have been an orbital bombing across the city and she would neither hear it nor feel it.

  Cords lay everywhere. Cookie had them hooked up to every outlet, some of them multiple times with plugs and splitter attachments stacked on top of each other. Standby lights blinked at her from around the room. On the opposite side, also hemmed in by black metal shelving—this one containing a small food cache and a refrigerator in addition to the room’s standard electronics—a double bed had been bookended against the walls. The covers were mussed up, half-dragged onto the floor.

  Karin’s jaw tensed, remembering her own first tussle with the Shadow.

  Had they all attacked at once? Or, somehow, waited until people had been asleep? Ships might have a set system time to follow, but those planetside tended to follow their local sun movement. On Enlil, that would have put the attack several hours after the one that had hit the Nemina. Plus there were the people on the other side of the planet to think about. Bau’s sister city, Hegir-Nuna, would have been either fifteen hours ahead or fifteen hours behind, given the planet’s rotation.

  Maybe there’d been some warning.

  But then, who would have believed it? Tales of Shadow people creeping out and attacking on the other side of the planet…

  She shook her head. She was trying to put logic to something neither rational nor, as far as they were aware, strictly real. What did it matter when the Shadows attacked? From all reports, the first attack had been staged across a single cycle.

  But then, if they did figure out when they had attacked, and if they figured out where the first one had appeared…

  Maybe they could find the origin. Find out where it had all started.

  No. No way. Others existed for that kind of thing. Someone in the tri-planet Alliance had to be working on it. They had all those military resources floating around, after all.

  Although, by the looks of things, Enlil’s military seemed a little busy dealing with the Lost.

  Marc reached over and grabbed a small duffel off the shelf, emptied the contents on the bed, and started pulling clothes out of a set of drawers that had been stuffed under another shelf. “Mind getting that computer over there? Maybe a netlink? He’ll need them on the ship.”

  She raised an eyebrow, but did as she was told. A few laptops cluttered across the shelves. She picked the newest one, looped its charging cables around her forearm, then found a small carrying bag to wrap it in. Several netlinks also inhabited the room, but the one on a counter near the tiny pull-out kitchen had the least amount of dust on it. Its screen rolled out as she grabbed it, asking for a passcode.

  It flicked off as she tossed it into the bag with the laptop.

  When she turned around, Marc had finished packing. He stood still, arms collected in front of him as he studied her.

  “You up for this trip?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Yeah.”

  “You sure? It’s a military operation.”

  “I’ve been around military before.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  She quirked an eyebrow. “You planning on telling them what I can do?”

  He shook his head. “No. Absolutely not. You’re right about that—we’d never get you out. It’s just—well, Cookie is Lost.”

  “So?”

  “He may be considered a threat. They may not let us take him. If—”

  “Look, let’s just play it by ear. They may be happy to be rid of him.” She made a gesture. “You saw how many they had on Caishen? And that was just a station’s worth.”

  His jaw tensed at her words, and she almost regretted the reminder. “If nothing else, we can at least see what it’s like,” she said. “If we can’t get him out now, then—”

  “No. We need to get him out as soon as we can get in. If we wait too long, they may close the bases down to outsiders, and we’ll have missed our chance.”

  “All right.” She raised her hands. “Now you’re starting to worry me. What do you have in mind?”

  “I dunno. I thought maybe if we could get him into a closet or something, somewhere out of view, and you did your thing… Then we get him out quick.” His shoulder drew up as he sighed. “I dunno. I just think—”

  The quick beep of an incoming call on his netlink made them both jump. He frowned as he pulled it out of his pocket, checking the information on the screen. Then, flashing her a quick look, he brought it to his ear. “Soo?”

  In the quiet, Soo-jin’s voice proved rather easy to hear.

  “Marc? You guys need to get over here right now. Songbird’s been taken. We got people trapped. You guys anywhere near the bird?”

  Songbird Sanctuary. The image of a temple building flashed through her mind as she remembered where Soo-jin had been going. She'd only seen pictures of the place, but, by the few times Soo-jin had spoken of it, a number of people lived at its mountain residence.

  “We’re at Cookie’s.” He pulled the netlink away to check the time. “If we find a cab, we can have her up in thirty minutes.”

  “Good. Do it. And bring guns. And lots of lights.” Soo-jin paused. “And definitely bring Karin.”

  Across the room, he met her eyes. She nodded.

  “Got it. We’ll be there.”

  “Good. Get going.”

  The call cut off.

  He sighed. His jaw tensed as he looked around the room, a muscle in his cheek working as he took one last, long sweep over Cookie’s place. Then he picked up the duffel, pushing its strap over his shoulder.

  “Guess Cookie will have to wait a little longer.”

  Chapter 25

  The last glimmer of sunset cut from view as Karin piloted the Nemina down. Thick darkness covered the forested mountain below, allowing only the occasional glimmer of streetlights from where the highway intersected with the mountain at its base. The access road ribboned through the trees below her. It cut through the canopy in a brief and sudden manner, like finding a slice of bare scalp in a parting of thick hair.

  She flicked on the forward lights as she drew close to t
he surface. Leaves and branches, their color washed out from the yellow-white tint, shook from the thrusters’ air push.

  Then the dusty-gray of a gravel lot flashed onto the viewscreen. She pushed on the hover mode, eased the craft around for a better look, and spotted Soo-jin and Ethan leaning against an older-model Senschel farther up the lot.

  The two watched them land, the wind from the thrusters blowing a haze of dust into the air. Soo-jin lifted a hand up against the Nemina’s lights.

  Then she connected to the ship’s network. Marc’s netlink went off in his hand.

  He set it on an empty part of the dashboard. “What’s the word?”

  “Shadows. Lots of them.” Through the viewscreen, they saw Soo-jin turn her face toward the sanctuary. “Did you bring the guns?”

  “Yeah. You get any visual?”

  “I saw at least two, and then I high-tailed it. Didn’t want to risk Ethan. Or, you know, myself.” She paused. “I’ve been talking to the others on the local network. Grandpa Chris, Leina, and Nona are all holed up in the back.”

  “And you want to do this alone?”

  “Absolutely. Alone and before the military gets here. I thought that—” Her breath choked. She hunched where she leaned against the side of the land-vehicle, looking small and thin as she bowed her head and pinched the bridge of her nose.

  For a moment, only a slight static crackled across the connection.

  “Sorry, I—” A ragged breath went through the microphone. She straightened. “This is my home, pretty much. You know?”

  “It’s okay. What were you thinking?”

  “Well, I thought that it would be better if we got this place cleared before the military got in. That way, Karin could do her thing. Sorry, Karin, it’s just—”

  “No.” She sat up and leaned forward. “I don’t mind.”

  Although, even as she said it, a hot flash of panic snapped through her chest. More people would know about her.

  “Thanks. I… really appreciate it."

  She swallowed a hard thought and sat back, contemplating the building. From the Nemina’s view—she’d parked it terribly, on a bad angle—only the right-most corner infringed at the very top-left of the screen. The rest was just Soo-jin, Ethan, the dented land-vehicle, and the thick, black forest that rose up at the edge of the lot.