Bloodback

by Darby Harn

“Can you be sure?”

  Not without exposing my location, and the Earth, to the others. “There’s a way, but… it comes with a price.”

  “Everything does.”

  Tell me about it. My mind fires. What if there is another Ever, prowling the gutted industrial wild between Break Pointe and Chicago for the last fifty years, living off of half-consumed energy? My fear runs away with me. Even damaged, an Ever might be able to become invisible. They might be able to slip in and out of the In Between.

  “What else can we do?” I say.

  “I can review the case files again,” Anwar says. “There may be more here in Chicago, but most older files are archived now that the police have been disbanded. Boshi, make the call to the archivist in Glenview. Tell them to expect us this morning.”

  She leaves without speaking. Clack-clack-clack. The door closes behind her, and a smile cracks on Anwar’s lips.

  “You don’t like her,” he says.

  I shrug. “Feeling seems to be mutual.”

  “I like you.”

  I cast a sideways glance at him. “Thank you.”

  “You don’t like me?”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “Maybe you just don’t like black men?”

  This is getting really sideways. “Men in general.”

  He smiles again. “What about black women?”

  What is this supposed to be? My cue, that’s what. I touch the window, closing the files. As I do, I acquire them all, and everything else connected to Anwar’s personal wireless network.

  “You review your files. I’ll go back to Break Pointe and see what I can dig up there. Thank you, Anwar.”

  “We have a lot in common, Kitsie.” Anwar leans against the window. “We’re both responsible for a city. And neither of us have all the resources we need to do our jobs.”

  The giant chandelier over the center of the living room glitters with the inconstant sun. “Is that right?”

  “Great Power pays me very well. I’m a very fortunate man. Many people in Chicago are not. They can’t afford the services of GP, and with the troubles the company has experienced recently, we’ve had to cut back. We’re losing customers. Now, if you live downtown, or out in the northern suburbs, you don’t ever think about your security. But if you live in Pullman, or Riverdale, or say Gresham, like your grandmother…”

  I stop halfway to the door.

  “…you probably think about it. A lot.”

  I turn back to him. “What are you doing?”

  He raises his hands, like he’s confused. “Making a point?”

  “About black people? Or about me?”

  “African Americans are nearly thirty percent of the population here,” he says, like I don’t know. “But only four percent of GP’s customer base. You’ll find the same in terms of the company’s employment. I don’t think I have to tell you that. I’m a lucky guy, it’s true. But I earned this job. I earn it every day, playing an old game. You may have quit GP, Kitsie. But you can’t quit the game. The uniform never comes off.”

  My body isn’t my body anymore, not really, but my face didn’t change. My skin color. My discomfort, layered and deep, at the subject he’s picking at now. All my life, there’s been someone like him, at school, at work, in Gresham, checking my credentials. Making connections was hard enough for me without being a nerdy mixed race girl with a half-baked Irish accent. I was never American enough. Girly enough. Black enough.

  “I didn’t realize this was a test,” I say.

  Anwar gazes out on the invisible city. “It’s always a test. Don’t misunderstand me, Kitsie. I just want you to know where I’m coming from. You have certain ideas about me.”

  “You’ve got some about me.”

  “Lots of people do. Frankie Fleet. Evander Blackwood. Your old man’s rather extensive relations on the South Side.”

  My fingers dig into my palm. “What do you know about them?”

  “More than you, I think.”

  “Am I not angry enough for you, Anwar? Or is it just that I’m not impressed enough by all your ‘bling?’”

  He wears a smug smile as he heads back to the kitchen. “It takes a lot to impress you. Abi is a beautiful woman. Valene… Valene. Who can argue with that? I like all kinds of women. All kinds of people. I’m obligated to protect the ones who can afford me. And I’m obligated to the ones who can’t.”

  This fucking guy.

  “You think you’re going to guilt me into – what, exactly? – by talking some basic shit about how I’m not doing enough for my own community? When was the last time you were in Break Pointe, Anwar? Do you know what my community looks like? Do you know what I do for them? Everything. I do everything, because people like you told people like them – like me – to drop dead.”

  Anwar leans against the counter of the island, nodding along. “You don’t do anything, Kitsie.”

  “What?”

  “That’s why you’re here. If you were so busy, and so successful, you would have sent one of your lieutenants. Nothing is happening in Break Pointe. You need something to happen.”

  “I’m leaving,” I say, and head for the door. Again.

  “You’re here to make a difference,” he says. “You’re here to make something work. Isn’t that right?”

  I want to be broken with you, Abi said.

  I stop. “Yes.”

  “I’m not giving you a hard time because I don’t think you’re doing enough, Kitsie. I’m giving you a hard time because I need to know how far you’re willing to go.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That power cell Lamar had? I sold it to a client in Detroit a few months ago. I checked my records. The client received the merchandise in full. No complaints.”

  I shake my head. “So how did Lamar end up with it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I drift back to the kitchen. “If he took it from them, they might not have been that happy about it. Who did you sell it to?”

  “I never ask.”

  “Why would you,” I say.

  He leans against the counter. “I want for there to be no secrets between us, so I’m telling you about Detroit. But we’re not investigating that angle. They’re a prize client and that’s a revenue stream that frankly, I can’t and won’t do without.”

  “You’re a real hero, Anwar.”

  “I don’t sell contraband on the black market to maintain a certain lifestyle, Kitsie. I do it to protect a community that can’t afford me otherwise. Those bean counters at the Blackwood Building, they just look at the bottom line on the balance sheet. None of them care where the money comes from, or why so many people in low income housing have annual memberships.”

  I pull out a stool, and sit down. “You’re buying memberships for people with the money from the market?”

  “Over 30,000 people. So if you shut down the black market…”

  “I shut down these communities.”

  His eyes set off in the distance. “When it all went down between you and Blackwood, I got a phone call. The man himself. He asked me to look up your family there in Gresham.”

  My jaw dangles. “What?”

  “’Talk to them,’ he says. I knew what he meant. Convince them to go on TV and drag you. He couldn’t do it. Frankie Fleet couldn’t. But I could.” His smile is tired now. “But the Baldwins are one of the families I pay out of petty cash. I’m responsible for them. So I lied. I told Blackwood they wouldn’t have it. I never did talk to them. You should, though.”

  Sometimes I feel everything. Sometimes nothing. And sometimes, like right now, I feel only the sheer of my fierce, determined resistance to feel anything at all.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “No thanks are necessary. I see everything, Kitsie. But I have to turn a blind eye to some things, to make the rest clear. As I said. I have to know how far you’re willing to go.”

  Used to be I got these tension headaches. Instant. Head in a vise.
I don’t have nerves, anymore. Muscles. The chemistry that shrank my entire body around my last nerve. I just have the memory, triggered any time I run into the limits of my power.

  “I’m just supposed to sit there and do nothing while people walk out of Break Pointe with the entire store?”

  He shakes his head. “What do you need, in Break Pointe?”

  I laugh. “Everything.”

  “What do you need most?”

  “Power,” I say. “I need heat. Lights. I can defend against Empowered criminals, but not hypothermia. I have this idea, though… it’s an engine, based off the Myriad. It can offer clean, unlimited energy. It works. I can light The Derelicts with it, if I could manufacture it. If I had the money.”

  He nods. “How much?”

  “Millions of dollars. I don’t even know. Parts, labor, infrastructure. Cities don’t have that kind of money.”

  “Let’s make a deal,” he says. “I’m going to give you the capital you need to get started on this engine of yours.”

  I reel back on the stool. With the engine, I can get the city through the winter. I can save lives. “And in return?”

  “You’re going to leave the black market open. More than that, you’re going to give me right of first refusal on everything that comes out of your lab.”

  Visions of a lab humming with creativity crackle through my head. Focus. “I’m here to find a killer.”

  “You’re going to catch one. Hypothermia.”

  I shouldn’t be surprised. Gennady did this to me. This is no different. Just economies of scale.

  I tug at the zipper of my jacket. “I promised to clean up the wreck. To police my city. Contraband is against the law.”

  “I think you make the law now in Break Pointe,” he says. “You can clean up the wreck. I’ll still take all the junk off your hands. This engine works, I’ll take that, too.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re a smart girl, Kitsie. Good with math. It’s a simple equation. Help me, and I help you. We help our communities.”

  “At what cost?”

  He closes his eyes. “What choice do you have?”

  The same one I had when I took the Myriad. I thought I was doing something for someone else, for the greater good and it cost me my life. Not my life. Any kind of living. And yet I have done good, haven’t I? I’ve salvaged some hope at least that something is going to get better in The Derelicts.

  How is it going to get better?

  “Ok,” I say.

  His brows arch. “Ok?”

  “I’ll keep the market open…” The zipper strains in my hand. “And you’ll fund my engine.”

  Anwar smiles, and extends his hand. The sun flares briefly and the dark of the room ejects, only to fall back in. I wish Abi was here. I wish I had her pulse to guide me, ba-dumm.

  “But I’m working with you. Not GP.”

  “This is strictly us. And strictly off the books.”

  I shake his hand. “Deal.”

  “Outstanding.” He lifts his cape off its perch and wraps it around his shoulders. “Let’s go look at some files.”

  The birds leave the window. I follow Anwar out of the apartment, not at all sure where I’m going.

  Nine

  Miles of boxes line the shelves in a warehouse somewhere in the suburbs. Sifting through the old case files is excruciating.

  If I could just put my hand on one of these and acquire all the information stored here, I could probably save myself a couple days. Strange deaths involving emaciated corpses ought to be obvious enough, but there’s no key to this map. Decades of boxes go on into the dark, the warehouse musty as an old library and my PEAL buzzes. I don’t look at it at first.

  What do I say to Abi.

  I don’t think I’ve ever been in a fight with a girlfriend before. Actually, I don’t know I’ve ever had a proper girlfriend. Valene, I guess. Before her, before Abi, I never dated. I never chatted girls up. I didn’t know how. I certainly never argued with them. I don’t know how to navigate this except toss off some pithy thing to say, and I don’t want to be pithy with Abi. I don’t want to be sharp or defensive.

  I just want to be.

  My PEAL buzzes again. I swipe at the screen. It’s Vidette.

  Getting anywhere?

  Nowhere at all. I could spend as many years as this warehouses holds trying to figure out if the killer is an Ever. There’s an easier way for me, though it comes at a price. Down the row, Blind Tiger smiles, as he browses another folder.

  I type a quick response. I’m coming home.

  Stars flare and die in shafts of pallid light through the gash in the ship’s hull. A light snow frosts the scabbed garnet of the inner ship, granting the wreck a serenity I’ve never seen in it before. I ascend to the core, and that peace vanishes. Peaks and valleys prickle the undulant surface, some lancing to sharp points right at my heart, drawn along the interplay of magnetic lines between the core and the Myriad. I keep to the edge of the ring bounding the core, trying to resist the tremendous compulsion in magnetism, in instinct, in desire.

  The work must continue.

  I unzip my jacket. Energy vines from the core at me. My hand suspends above the terminal, torn between two magnetic forces, as fevered cords of magenta wrap around my hand and my hand hovers over the terminal. A lock.

  I’m the key.

  I could know, with a touch, if there is another Ever on Earth, preying on the helpless and the forgotten. In an instant, I’d know exactly where they were and I could bring an end to their reign of terror. And probably set off another. If I restore the interdimensional link to find this killer here on earth, the other Ever will know where the ship is.

  I could stop them. Control them, like I control myself. Sure I could. I’d make as much a mess of throwing up a signal flare to the other aliens as I did picking up the one in my chest. My duty is to do everything I can for the people in my care. I do that, and I’ll expose them to even greater danger. This tears me up, turning a blind eye, or at least a cloudy one, toward one killer, so I don’t hold open the door for eight more.

  A heartbeat.

  That’s all it would take. A portal would open and they’d step out of their culling of the cosmos into the city. Continue the work. Fix the ship. No doubt they’d fix me, the perfect, mindless acquisition machine, muddied with human thought.

  They’d fix the damaged Ever.

  This other Ever must feel the same magnetic pull I do. Reunion sits right here behind the wall. Repair. Restoration. If The Ever is able enough to hunt down prey, they could get inside the ship. And then I’d have much larger problems.

  There is no Ever.

  I wrest away from the terminal. Back to square one. No Ever. No Empowered, registered at least, with any energy draining ability. Nothing in those endless files back in Chicago suggests any other leads. The only one I have is buried in Detroit and the strange metal of the deck rattles behind me.

  I wrest away from the terminal. “Siski?”

  The wolf ambles across the deck, undaunted by the threat either the core or I pose. Star Walker find killer?

  I draw the zipper up far as it goes. “I thought I did.”

  Siski anxiously wags her tail. Who?

  “Whoever is responsible is drawing the energy of their victims. The killer seems to be moving back and forth between Break Pointe and Chicago. The kills are random, irregular… there’s no pattern, except all the victims are from poor neighborhoods or rural areas that don’t see a lot of activity.”

  Shows intelligence.

  “If these cases are connected, this has gone on years. Decades. They’re a lot smarter than we even know.”

  What takes you Chicago?

  I bite my lip. “You know Teto helped me.”

  What you find, Star Walker?

  Headaches, mostly. What did I find? If I tell her about Detroit, I kick over a can of gasoline on a fire I can’t even see. What do I know? I don’t know anything right no
w.

  “I’m still chasing leads,” I say.

  The wolf’s tail bristles. Wolves don’t chase. They hunt.

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  She snarls a fang at me. No. Wolves stalk long time. We run prey, to make tired. Confused. Then, we kill.

  Lovely. “I’m trying, Siski.”

  Siski eyes the core. You come here for answers?

  There are only questions here. I eliminated some, at least. Generated a few more. The same test, again and again.

  You afraid.

  “Yes. I am.”

  But want to know.

  I lean against the curved railing of the deck. “Do you know the story of Icarus? Frankenstein? Kind of sums me up.”

  These your stories?

  My reflection fractures across the glassiness of the cavern above. “I don’t know I have any stories. That’s not true. I’ve tons. Irish ones… American. Stories going back to Africa. They’re all my stories, but none of them are.”

  You no faith, Siski says.

  “What?”

  Star Walker not know herself. Star Walker not know where she come from. So she not believe. Siski cranes her head, eyes scanning the cracked dome of the ship. Wolf cannot lead pack if wolf not know where pack has been. Where pack come from.

  The idea I don’t know where I come from is some off the shelf bullshit like Anwar was trying out on me, but the wolf is already picking through the bones of my thoughts, sniffing out every instance where I denied my life. My past. My self. Shame clouds my memories. That was all a long time ago, when walking out the door to school or work was walking out in front of a firing squad. I didn’t want to be Irish. Black. Gay.

  I didn’t want to be me.

  There was no me. Just Kit. Not Kitsie. And then this happened, and I do want to be. I want to know. All those years I denied myself, I want them back. All that history.

  “Didn’t you banish Lamar for wanting to know more about the origins of your pack?”

  Siski’s head droops. Lamar not listen.

  “You’re not interested in the source of your power, Siski?”

  Power comes from Great Deer.

  “Tell me.”

  Great Deer have many crowns. Regent all kingdoms. Great Deer drink from Blood Stream. Eyes catch fire. Antlers fire. Woods fire. World. Everything burns. Trees. Sky. Wolves.