“Still,” Sam tried, “nothing beats fresh air, yeah?”
“I get all the refreshment I need from reading the Testament,” Kelly said.
In any other situation, Sam would have doubled over in laughter at such a statement from her friend. Here, though, it served only to unnerve her further. Kelly sounded like she meant it.
Kelly stole a sudden glance back toward the door, then leaned in toward Samantha and lowered her voice. “I think they’re hiding something there, at the stadium. What it is I’m not sure, but it’s important. A ‘cube,’ someone called it. I have to find out—”
“I know what it is,” Sam said. “I found it for them. It came from—”
Kelly stepped back, her face hard and judgmental. She pressed a finger to her left ear. “The bird sings,” she said.
Samantha didn’t understand. “What?”
Kelly paid her no attention. “She spoke of it. She’s not ready.”
Before Sam could say anything she heard the sound of the metal door creaking open. She turned to see Grillo at the doorway. He stepped out, and Kelly went to him, taking a place just behind his left shoulder.
“Sam … Sam …,” Grillo said. “I thought we’d come further than this. You disappoint me.”
She thought of protesting or playing dumb, but there seemed no point. She’d been sucker-punched by her last friend in the world, and all these months of work for this jackass were scattered to the hot wind. Sam felt a strong temptation to turn and step off the edge of the roof. She thought this must have been how Skyler felt when he crashed the Melville. Everything gone, taken. Skyler had fought on, though.
“You’ve failed this little test, Miss Rinn. I can’t really blame you, though. You value your friends above all else. To a fault, unfortunately.”
“Nail me to a cross then, asshole.”
Grillo sucked in his lower lip, the composure on his face faltering for the briefest instant. “Anger is understandable. Your words, forgivable. But blaspheme again, Samantha, and I will show you pain far beyond what the redeemer experienced.”
Any urge she may have felt to test his promise fell away when she saw the calm in his eyes, the absolute confidence. All of a sudden she wanted to be very far away.
“This transgression need not mean an end to our arrangement, Samantha. Just a delay, I’m afraid. I need to know you can be trusted, that you’re truly one of us. Kelly has seen the path—”
“It’s not Kelly anymore,” the thin woman said.
Grillo turned to her, one eyebrow raised.
“I’m ready to take my sister name. I’m ready to leave my former self behind.”
Samantha could only stare at her, the shadow of the woman she thought she’d known.
“Have you chosen a name?” Grillo asked.
“I have,” Kelly replied calmly. “It was my mother’s name.”
Gabby, Sam thought. Kelly had told her many stories of her mum, Gab Gab, and how she’d been the very embodiment of the name. Always talking, always at ease in social settings. Kelly had envied that quality in her childhood, and strove to channel it as an adult.
“Josephine,” Kelly said. “My mother would smile if she could see me now.”
“She can, Sister Josephine,” Grillo said. “I’m sure she’s as proud as I am.”
The name tripped Samantha, like the wrong punch line to a familiar joke. She realized her mouth was agape and snapped it shut, grateful that Grillo was looking at Kelly—Josephine—and not her. Josephine. The name rang a bell. Kelly had mentioned it before. No, Sam thought, she’d used it before.
On Gateway they’d needed access to a new set of security codes, and set about stealing them from a room that stored archival data for the entire station. Sam had assumed they would wait for the room to be empty, but Kelly told her to wait and listen. She’d proceeded then to bluff her way in, claiming to be Josephine and saying she’d forgotten her key card. Her acting had been masterful, Sam recalled, and the technician on duty had waved her in as if they were old friends.
Josephine. A persona Kelly had donned to steal something important. Listen to the ghost. Kelly is working an extremely long con, Sam realized, and this moment, right now, was the tipping point. Her friend wanted to remain in captivity in Lyons, or else whatever plot she’d cooked up would be ruined.
And whatever she was up to, it was important enough to throw Sam under a bus.
With sudden clarity she realized Grillo had been playing them both on the same angle. Convince him of their sincerity, and he’d reward them. Sam had been going along to win Kelly’s freedom, fully intending to escape with her friend at the earliest opportunity. Kelly’s reward seemed to be stature in the Jacobite church. To what end, Sam had no idea.
“So what happens now?” Sam asked, buying time.
Grillo turned back to her as if he’d forgotten she was there. “I’m afraid we’re back to square one. You’ll return to your duties and try to earn my trust again. That, or rot in a cell, I suppose.”
“Maybe I could take the robes, too,” Sam said. “Say my Hail Marys or whatever you guys do.”
“I’m afraid not,” Grillo said. “I’d hoped sending Sister Jo to live with you—Sister Jo, I do like the sound of that! I’d hoped she could bring you to our flock, but I think more time is required. Return to your duties, Sam, and meanwhile I will think on what has happened here.”
“What if I refuse?” she asked.
Grillo sighed. “Then you’ll leave this roof the quick way.”
Outside, the sun baked the city. Dry air raked across the dirty yard of Nightcliff, whipping up bits of trash along with the constant spray of fine sand. Sam could taste the grit of it in her mouth, and would have spat if she could muster the saliva.
The two guards who had escorted her from the building informed her that a car would be along to take her home. Courtesy of Grillo, they did not neglect to mention. Whether it was an offer or an order, she didn’t care. Sam told them she’d rather walk, and she slipped through the patrol door adjacent to the fortress gates before the pair of goons could stop her.
In wet season Ryland Square was a sea of mud. Now, under the crush of sunlight and hot wind, the surface had become a cracked, brittle wasteland that crunched under her boots. Pigeons scattered as she crossed the center of the wide space, but would land again behind her the moment she passed. They squawked and fought over the corpse of a mouse, half-buried in the cake of mud.
It would take hours to walk back to the hangar, but she needed the time and space to think, and that wouldn’t happen unless she avoided the scavenger crews. Lately they seemed incapable of even taking a piss unless she ordered it.
Ryland Square butted against Nightcliff’s southern gate, and skyscrapers framed it on the three other sides. The square, a vast expanse of baked hardpan and broken concrete, was eerily quiet. Food riots, an almost daily occurrence during Russell Blackfield’s stand against the Orbitals, were now a fading memory. Whether that was due to ample supply, or suppressed citizens, Sam didn’t know. The cynic in her assumed the latter, but she’d brought enough soil and gardening equipment to Darwin in the last few months to wonder.
Power remained stable on the Elevator’s cord, a fact that Blackfield tried to take credit for, and the city’s endless supply of street urchins would believe anything as long as their bellies were full.
Grillo understood that tactic as well.
A third explanation for the empty square became obvious as she approached the edge of it. Jacobites milled about the gaps between buildings. She saw only a few at first, but as she walked closer the shadows came alive. There were a dozen of them at least, at just this one entry point. They spanned every age, race, and size, and all were armed with simple hand weapons. One carried an AK-47 on his back. The leader of the little troop, Sam guessed.
She realized then that she’d walked into Darwin unarmed. No wonder Grillo’s bodyguards were so surprised at her refusal of the ride home. The Jacobite thugs nodded at her as she approached, though. They must have watched her since the moment she left Nightcliff’s gate, and no one walked out of there alone and unarmed unless they were damn important. Sam hoped so, anyway.
She ignored them as she passed, save for the one with the rifle. To him she gave a simple, stern nod, which he returned. A gesture of respect, she thought, though his eyes held a measure of contempt. Most likely because she did not wear their robes.
Beyond Nightcliff’s shadow, the city began to show signs of life. Filthy couriers dressed in rags shuffled about barefoot, carrying sacks of unknown contents over their backs. Few people of means braved street level themselves. Much of their business was done with adjacent buildings, and wherever possible zip lines and crude rope bridges spanned the gaps of alleys, high above the ground. For matters that required venturing farther from home, it was far better to send some skinny ground dweller to deliver goods or pick up supplies.
Grillo’s mark was evident out here, too. Jacobite thugs patrolled the streets in packs of four or five, and Sam noted how the ragged citizens gave them wide berths. She wondered if the slumlord’s sudden piety had more to do with the army he now seemed to command than it did any fervent belief as to the nature of the alien cable that stretched up into space.
Whatever. They’re still freaks.
The image of Kelly, wearing those robes as she stood above Darwin, brought the sour taste of bile to Sam’s throat. That moment would haunt her, no doubt. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough, and hopefully she could leave the past where it belonged.
“Keep telling yourself that,” she said.
She reached the airport unmolested. A couple of teens slipped out of an alley in front of her at one point, but it took only the gesture of cracking her knuckles to send them racing away. No mugger wanted a victim who would fight back, especially with all the Jacobites patrolling the area.
The guards at the airport gate were all Nightcliff supplied, and they waved her through without any fuss. Sam noted the total absence of swagmen around the gate. In times past, there would always be a crowd of hopeful petitioners loitering there, hoping to bend the ear of a scavenger to fetch something for them. Skyler used to stop and listen to them, in the early days. Eventually even he had to snub them, though. There was no room for charity work in this world. Not anymore.
A raucous sound came from Woon’s tavern. Laughter and loud voices, common in the late evenings, was rather unusual for two in the afternoon.
Sam saw the backs of twenty people crowded near the door, facing within. Even more patrons were packed inside, all facing the bar. Another roar of laughter went up, and drinks were thrown back.
“What the hell?” she whispered.
She elbowed her way inside, and those behind her quieted. Others picked up the change in mood, turned, and went silent as well. By the time Sam reached the back of the room, all of the merriment had died out.
Their attentions had been focused on a man who sat at the bar, and for a split second her heart leapt. Skyler?
The man’s hair dispelled that. Dark, sloppy dreadlocks. Sam knew that hair, and couldn’t keep the grin from her face as she shouldered past the last row of onlookers.
“Skadz,” she said. “You goddamn son of a bitch!”
“Sammy!” her old captain beamed, a broad smile flashing across his dark-skinned face. “ ’Bout time you got here. I was running out of jokes to feed these blokes.”
She drew him into a soldier’s embrace. “They’ve heard ’em all, I’m sure.”
“Didn’t stop them from laughing.”
She released him from the hug and held him at arm’s length. Skadz, co-founder with Skyler of the original immune crew. The two had traveled together from Amsterdam to Darwin, and found her in no-man’s-land fighting off a pack of subs. She’d killed four by the time they arrived to help, and probably could have handled the rest. Nevertheless, they’d been kind to her, and the three had their immunity in common. With nowhere else to go she’d stuck with them.
Jamaican born, Skadz was adopted by a Dutch family early on. As he told it, his adoptive parents then moved to England to follow the father’s job, before coming back just before SUBS broke out. All this combined into one of the most unique people Sam had ever met. Skadz had the easygoing demeanor of an islander, the enlightened worldview of the Dutch, and the snooty accent of a Londoner.
“You look like you’ve seen a bloody ghost,” he said.
“I’m looking at one,” she shot back. It has been a day of ghosts already.
“Drink?” he asked.
Sam looked around. “Let’s take a bottle to the hangar,” she said.
He nodded, then added a grin that faltered slightly. He’d been away for more than a year, and must have noted the Nightcliff guards at the gate, and at his old hangar. No Melville inside, and no Skyler to greet him, either.
“You’ve got a million questions, I’ll bet,” Sam said. She grabbed a random bottle off the counter and offered a peace sign to Woon, who just nodded. Everyone loved Skadz, and Woon perhaps most of all. Outside the old crew, and Prumble, Woon had been the most surprised when the Jamaican had walked away from everything without a single goodbye.
“At least that many,” her old captain agreed. He knew enough to hold them back, though.
She led him toward the hangar in silence. By now word of his presence at the airport had traveled to everyone, even those who didn’t know him from before. A half-dozen people shook his hand or simply said “welcome back” as they weaved through the ragtag armada of scavenger ships that sat on the crumbling tarmac.