Wren shrugged. “No one from Andilly has names. They have numbers. I’ve just been calling him Anders.”
“Anders?” I tried tentatively. He brushed a matted piece of black hair behind his ear, but otherwise he didn’t answer me.
“How did you get here? What can you tell me about the guards? I think I can get us out if you—hey, where are you going?”
He had dropped the bundle of jumpsuits and shoes at my feet and was lumbering back into the shadows.
“Hey, Big Red! I’m talking to you! How did you do that neat little disappearing trick?”
That got his attention. He glared over his shoulder, hands curling into fists.
“I can read auras. I can’t feel yours. It was like you weren’t even in the room. Is everyone from Andilly like that or just you?”
Nothing. I might as well have been talking to the wall. He sat back down again, not even a hint of emotion flickering off him.
“See?” Wren said. “Just ignore him, because he’ll only ignore you. I’m not sure if he can talk at all, to be honest.” She held up a square piece of metal, examining it. “But whatever you do, don’t call him Andy. He tried to strangle me the last time I tried.”
“Charming.” Elio snatched the metal out of Wren’s hand, digging a long scratch in the wall behind her head.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Counting the days we’re here. That way if Big Red rips out my wires in the middle of the night, the universe will know that this is the place I last stood.” He shivered. “It already feels like we’ve been in here for an eternity.”
“You’ve been here for an hour,” Wren said. She made a grab for the metal, but Elio danced out of reach.
I removed my soiled jacket and pulled on one of the red jumpsuits the guard had left for us. The arms and legs were too baggy, but at least it was warm. I settled against the nearest wall while Wren continued sorting her treasures, singing a jingle about each one and its metallic components. Anders let loose a low chuckle, the sound ringing out of the darkness like a bell. A drop of water fell from the ceiling and landed with a splat on the tip of my nose.
It was enough to drive even the most placid soul to murder.
5
“So…,” Wren said, rubbing her palms together. “Anyone up for a game of charades?”
There were a few communities of Earthans scattered throughout Condor, but I’d never met any of them, so I had no clue if they were all this annoying, but somehow I didn’t think so. It was day two in the cell, and it was also the twentieth time I’d ignored Wren’s attempt at conversation. I’d spent the prior night shivering in a ball, listening to Elio’s fans whir and Anders shift around in his darkened corner. He still hadn’t spoken, but that didn’t mean I could let my guard down and sleep. Some primal part of me was convinced that if I closed my eyes, I’d find his fingers clenched around my throat.
“Charades?” Wren asked again, eyes bright. “Come on, it’s so boring in here! We have to keep ourselves entertained somehow. Okay, look. Guess who I am.” She slouched against the wall, baring her teeth and growling.
“A bear!” Elio shouted. “Wait, do they still have bears on Earth?”
Wren shook her head. “They’re extinct. Try again.” She scrunched her face up and growled louder. “I’ll give you a hint. I’m super mean and I hate everyone’s guts.”
“Are you my subconscious?” I muttered.
“No, but thank you for participating, Cora. No, guys, look! I’m obviously Anders!”
Across the cell, the real Anders leaned out of the shadows just enough for me to see his scaly face. And he looked like he wanted nothing more than to eat us all.
I hastily looked away from him, pulling my knees up to my chest. “This is absurd,” I said to Elio, slipping into lilting Condish. I didn’t know how many languages Wren and Anders knew, but I hoped they didn’t know mine. I needed some tiny shred of privacy in this place.
“It could be worse,” Elio replied.
“Oh, really? How?”
“Well, I mean, we could be dead.”
Okay, fair point. But dead or alive, I had a feeling my family wouldn’t care that we were gone. On second thought, they probably hadn’t even realized we were gone. And even if they had, they’d probably only feel relief.
I hung my head. We needed to get out of here.
Reluctantly, I switched back to common Isolat. “This is absurd,” I said again.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Wren. She pulled a long piece of metal out from under her blanket and measured it against the side of her forearm. “I have a feeling we’re all exactly where we’re meant to be.”
I bristled. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Just…” She peered up at the dim lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, her eyes so focused that I wondered if she was trying to have a telepathic conversation with it. “It’s just that I think we should get to know each other a little better if we’re going to be living here together, you know? For example, I’m a snorer. Feel free to slap me awake if I’m really bothering you.”
“Are you sure you want to give me permission to hit you?”
Wren shrugged. “Whatever works.”
Elio raised his hand. “Can I share next? I think everyone should know that even though I was built to be a servant bot, I’m downright messy. But I bake excellent cookies, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s all that really matters.”
Wren pointed to him. “This one I like. Anders? Can you top Elio’s baking abilities?”
All three of us ducked as Anders lunged out of the shadows, grabbed a handful of Wren’s coveted scrap metal, and chucked it at our heads. I covered my face as tiny pieces rained down on the back of my neck. Anders reclined against the wall, looking smug.
“Huh.” Wren pulled herself up and started collecting her displaced scrap metal. “He must be more of a chip and dip kind of guy.”
Rolling my eyes, I marched over to the door. I brushed my fingers around the sides, the track running along the floor, the points where each of the four cell walls met, searching for weak spots. I found none. Any bit of hope I’d had in my heart since we entered Ironside began to wither and die.
How are we going to get out of here?
“Cora?” Wren called. “I think it’s your turn to share.”
How am I going to save Elio?
“Cora? C’mon, don’t be shy.”
How do we get home?
“Cora?”
I rounded on her. “Shut up! Can’t you tell I don’t want to talk to you? Can’t you tell I don’t want to be here? Just shut up!”
Panicked silver starbursts exploded through her aura, lighting up the cell. Elio let out two quick beeps, then hid his face behind Wren’s blanket. And Wren—well, she shouldn’t have put out the offer for me to slap her awake, because she was staring at me like I had done just that.
“I … um … I’m s-sorry,” she stammered, taking her blanket back from Elio. After fluffing it up with shaking hands, she lay down and watched me through frightened eyes. “What are you looking at?”
“I’m watching your aura…” I held out my hand, marveling at the glittering stars that floated through the air and gathered in clusters on my fingertips. “It’s very…” Somehow I thought telling her that her fear was pretty to look at was the wrong thing to say. “You know what? Never mind.” I slumped down and watched the stars dissolve into the shadows.
Wren glanced around the cell. “Oh, that’s right. You said you can see auras.” With a yawn, she settled into her blankets. “That must be very helpful. Thank you for sharing.”
“I’m not sharing, I’m—”
But what I was doing didn’t matter. In under a minute, Wren had fallen asleep. If only I could be so lucky. Instead I had to listen to her snores shake the walls all night long.
* * *
The Ironside prison yard was less of a yard and more of a slab of concrete with weeds poking throug
h the cracks. An electric fence hummed around the square, four guard towers standing at attention in each corner, watching the inmates like birds of prey beneath a blood-red Andilly sky. Packed gray soil stretched out from the prison in every direction, broken up only by empty roads and a distant snow-capped mountain range. It was impossible to gauge how far away we were from civilization, but when Elio and I finally escaped this hellhole, it appeared we would have very few places to run.
“So … Condor?” Wren gestured to my silver hair. I’d managed to find a piece of twine to tie it up (the air outside was so humid that it felt like I was standing inside an armpit), but a few pieces had escaped and hung in my eyes. “I’ve never been. What’s it like?”
“Dark.”
“A truly verbose description.” Even after receiving the brunt of my fury last night, she was still determined to chat me up, and I was too exhausted to push her away. She led me through the crowd of inmates to a rusted table across the yard. I’d never seen so many different species in one place before. There were winged people from Avis exercising beside Ucarro women with flippers for feet and sharp green gills sprouting from their necks. A man walked past us in the opposite direction, holding a tray of food. His entire body was covered in so much curly brown fur that I couldn’t even make out his face.
“That’s Po,” Wren said. “He gives one heck of a neck massage. But where was I? Oh, right. My family is originally from London, but we left after Earth’s fifth world war. Did you hear about that one? It was a doozy. Anyway, I grew up in a colony on the south side of Mars. I really miss it.”
Mars. I’d helped rob their central treasury a total of three times in the last year. Security systems there were so easy to hack that it was almost embarrassing. But I felt like that probably wasn’t a fact she would appreciate.
“Why’d you leave?” I asked instead.
“Well, you see, I robbed it blind.”
Or maybe that was a fact she already knew.
“And how did that work out for you?”
“Better than expected. I snuck into the president’s mansion. Everything was going according to plan until I tried to steal the ferret…” She looked at her shoes.
“The ferret?”
“Long story. Its collar was worth more than my house. And, I mean, it was fuzzy and had this cute little pink nose. Who could pass that up?”
Uh …
“I kind of have an issue,” she continued, “with taking things.” And to prove her point, she swiped a bread roll off the plate of a passing inmate, her fingers slicing through the air with impressive speed. The guy had eight eyes by my count, and he didn’t even notice. That was a rare gift she had.
Wren hopped onto the tabletop and crossed her legs, looking out over the prison yard like she was holding court—even though her cheeks were stuffed with bread. She acted like she was sitting on a throne, not at all fazed by the many people here who could probably destroy her in a blink. I didn’t know whether to be impressed or confused.
“Aren’t you scared to be here?” I asked her.
She continued scanning the yard, jaw tight. “Of course I am. But I can’t show it. They’ll eat you alive if you do. And I mean that literally. There’s a chick in cell block D with a head shaped like a shark’s.”
I couldn’t help snickering a little.
She glanced down at me. “You’re laughing, but you don’t like me.”
Well, she wasn’t wrong. But I didn’t like many people anyway. “I just don’t understand you. You’re in prison and you’re … I don’t know. I guess cheery is the best word?”
“I’m a happy human. So what.” Her dark eyes hardened. “You could stand to be a bit more pleasant yourself.”
I still didn’t get it. What did she want? For me to be her prison buddy just because we were sharing a cell? I didn’t do people skills. I didn’t have time for them. I needed to get out of here, steal something expensive enough to appease Evelina, and then use my cut of the profits to buy Elio a new body. Those were the priorities. Not friendship.
Wren stuffed the remainder of her bread into her mouth. “I know it might be a challenge for you not to bite my head off this time, but how about you tell me more about these auras you can read.”
“Why?”
“Because my mother always told me I’m too curious for my own good. My brother did too, now that I think of it. Just humor me. Can you read the guards over there?” She pointed to a table across the yard, where a fight had broken out. Four guards raised their blasters and were halfheartedly attempting to intervene.
“Depends on if they’re doing the same trick Anders did. And I usually have to pick out a specific person, like tuning into a certain net program. I can’t read everyone at once.”
A violet cloud of excitement spilled off her, perfectly matched to her hair. “Try.”
“Fine. Whatever.” But I chose an easier mark to start. “Okay, see the man emptying the trash receptacle? He’s heartbroken. The guard in the tower just behind us? She’s so exhausted she can barely stand up straight. I’m guessing she just worked a double shift.” My skin buzzed with energy as I stretched my affinity to the four guards dragging the fighting inmates back inside. “Tired, bored to tears, giddy, oh … um, constipated.”
“Do me next.” Elio appeared at our table, laden with trays of powdered eggs, some kind of smoked meat, and more bread rolls.
“You know you don’t have an aura, you little goof. What’s with all the food?”
“Couldn’t pass it up. I heard it’s delicious.”
“Robots can eat?” Wren asked.
“No,” I said at the same time Elio declared, “I dabble.”
With a shrug, Wren snatched another roll off Elio’s plate and tore into it with her teeth. Her eyes continued scanning the yard, and while she was distracted, I pulled on Elio’s sleeve.
“How are you doing?”
He considered for a moment. “Well, I’m in prison, so…”
“That’s not what I meant.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Your glitching. You don’t feel anything coming on, do you?”
He nudged his food around his plate. “Eh, my optic sensors are a bit fuzzy, but that’s been happening for ages, so don’t worry about it.”
Don’t worry. Right. He could just cease to exist at any moment and I didn’t have the means to prevent it. But, hey, no biggie.
“Cora. Friend.” Elio took my cheeks in both of his tiny hands. “I’m not going anywhere. Literally. We’re locked in here.” He nodded across the yard, where we watched as a man spurted a plume of fire from his mouth and tried to throw a punch at a fifth guard before being detained. Elio shrugged, unfazed. “Have some bread. I don’t know if Wren realized it, but I can’t really eat.”
“Oh, I realized it all right.” With a grunt, Wren swung herself down from the tabletop and settled on the edge of the bench. “Hey, you essentially have a computer inside your head, right? That must come in handy. You don’t have any other special talents, do you?”
I felt my guard snap back up as I noticed a curious orange sunburst arc over her head. “You’re taking way too much of an interest in us. What gives?”
“What? I’m just being friendly.”
“No one is that friendly.”
“I am!” Elio interrupted. He leaned forward, the front of his prison jumpsuit hanging down into his eggs. “Did Cora tell you about the bombs she makes? If you need an explosion, she’s your girl.”
“Elio,” I warned.
“She invented all kinds of things on Condor,” he continued. “Of course, only half of them worked…”
“Elio!”
Call it intuition, but this didn’t feel right. Wren was fishing for something. I just wished I knew what.
I watched her chew her meal, a feline grin spreading across her face. What I wouldn’t give for a way to force her to tell me the truth. I could read auras, sure, but I couldn’t change them. I couldn’t make her feel things she di
dn’t feel; I couldn’t make her act on the feelings that she had. Right now her aura was a rainbow of colors I could barely keep up with. Auburn and powder blue, violet and sea-foam green. All muddled together in an indiscernible, murky swirl.
“Wren, I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll give you something that you want, and in exchange you tell me exactly what you’re up to. Sound good?”
“What is it you think I want?”
“Acceptance.” Her colors shifted then, and I could see it all over her. The desire to fit in. An Earthan trapped among aliens. “Or, well, I at least promise not to yell at you anymore.”
“That’s the best I’m going to get out of you, isn’t it?”
“Afraid so.”
She huffed out a long breath. Poked at the food in front of her. Shook her head, like she couldn’t believe what she was about to say. “I think … Cora, I think I know a way to get us out of here.”
“WHAT?” I screeched. The table next to us turned and stared, and I lowered my voice. “What?” I demanded in a whisper.
“It’s not going to be easy, but I think—”
Her voice broke off in a scream and a string of curses as, out of nowhere, a neon blue tentacle shot across the table and smacked her in the jaw.
“Hey!” I was instantly on my feet as Wren’s head snapped to the side. Elio dived forward, determined to help her, but a second attack didn’t seem to be what the intruder was after. The tentacle was more than six feet long, attached to the jaw of a woman smirking two tables over, and she used it to deftly lift Elio’s heaping plate of eggs into the air.
I assumed she was going to steal them for herself—because that seemed logical. What I didn’t expect was for the tentacle to twist with a lazy ripple, dumping the food on top of our heads.
“Seriously?” I grimaced as I picked a scalding piece of egg from between my cleavage. Wren grabbed it from me and sent it flying at Tentacle’s head.
“Watch it, Calamari! Try that again and I’ll rip your intestines out through your eyes!”
“That isn’t possible.” The woman started laughing, a few companions at her table joining in.
The Good for Nothings Page 5
