The Second Rebel, page 4
“That’s it?” he asks incredulously.
Well, there is one last thing. “You should think about washing that wound before using the pelospray.”
And then I jump.
* * *
BACK TO SQUARE one, and nothing to show for it. I move away from Rossi’s apartment, pulling my mask down and letting the fabric pool around my neck like a scarf. Disappointment washes over me at the same time as the noises of the night, but even the chaos of this commercial district doesn’t serve to distract me from the facts. Hemlock sent me here a month ago, and I’m still no closer to finding our target than the day I arrived.
I come to the end of the alley and dive into the fray. The disorder that is the outlaw station Autarkeia swallows me alive.
The only word to describe this place is clusterfuck. The station is a giant cylinder, rotating to create gravity, and while the interior is built like a cityscape, there is little that is homelike about it. There’s only night here, the black of space permeating every corner. What light exists burns brightly, hot splashes of neon used more to illuminate sections of the street than to brighten the whole settlement. Above, there’s no false sky, no barrier dome like I’m used to. There’s just more city, only from this direction it looks upside down.
The people who live here are just as outlandish as the city. Skin in a rainbow of unnatural colors presses against me, red and blue and purple on this street alone. Wings flutter, scales shimmer, and tails twitch in the shadows. Extra arms flex, digitigrade legs paw the ground, bone-like spurs protrude. Cybernetic enhancements in craniums—eyes like camera lenses, heads plugged with tubes—and prosthetics are everywhere. I make no mistake in believing they’re just limb replacements; I’ve seen people pull weapons out of hidden compartments in their mechanical arms or legs. Even those without all the extra bells and whistles have unique body art—glowing strips of light or ink billowing into different shapes across skin.
Every corner would give a member of the AEGIS heart palpitations for illegal body modification. The majority of these genetic enhancements are considered dangerous since there’s no guarantee they won’t affect the germ line and thus be passed on to children, and there’s no telling how that’d turn out.
I cut down a narrow street and cross into a more residential area. The buildings look the same—squat and flat with a cold metal sheen, built with necessity in mind as opposed to beauty—but the smells of various home-cooked dishes reach me—boiled cabbage, baked bread, some sort of grilled protein—and my stomach growls. Drones of various sizes zip by, not just the hand-sized ones we use in Cytherea; some are as big as a cat. The lowest floors of most buildings house shops, their windows a riot of holographic advertising, selling ship parts and “reclaimed” goods. Sound pulls at me from all directions, various discordant genres of music competing against each other, people in the midst of their lives shouting, laughing, fighting.
Finally, half an hour after I leave Rossi’s apartment, I reach the boundary where new meets old. Without much thought, I cross the invisible line and enter into the shadow of an industrial plant, once the heart of the Synthetic empire.
Or perhaps I should call it the womb. While no space is wasted in Autarkeia—with a million people, there’s none to waste—the industrial plants that built Synthetics during the Dead Century War, scattered throughout Autarkeia, are looked at with a sort of superstition and avoided. A few still work to power the station, but the majority are mere husks, whatever nuclear fission machines they housed long since gone to sleep.
While haphazard buildings are clustered next to them, even butting up against them at some points, the factories themselves remain untouched. They loom like organs in the torso of a fallen giant, silver rib-like structures reaching up to cradle the central dome of the plant. In their shadow, thin streets serpentine, forming circuitous alleyways that lead to what residents consider safer neighborhoods.
I can tell from the lack of noise that this plant is dead, a tombstone in the Synthetic graveyard that is Autarkeia.
On the opposite side of the dead plant, I come to a colorful building painted different shades of fading purple, and while I can hear the roar of the crowd a street over, the only people here are the harsh-eyed elderly sitting quietly on their balconies above. An orange cat with golden eyes yowls at me before running off. Next to the door is a sign in warped handwriting: DON’T PISS HERE!
From inside my jacket, I produce a key—a physical card key, as Autarkeia seems to run on ancient tech—and press it to the door. With a click, it unlocks. Inside, lights wake, sensing my movement and illuminating the hallway. At the first door on my left, I swipe the card again and enter what currently passes for my living space.
I’ve always had a complex relationship with the word home. While some think of their childhood house with their parents or siblings as home, I think of the Ceres barracks where I lived with Lito. Not much else has felt like home since then—
No, not true, a part of me whispers. For a time, home had been a person with golden hair and blue eyes… One I refuse to think about now, because she fell in love not with me, but with someone who doesn’t even exist.
“ただいま,” I call into the darkness.
“おかえりなさい,” a deep voice responds as the lights turn on, and I nearly shit my pants.
“Oh, what the fuck!”
Dire uncurls from my bed, and while the man holds his laughter hostage, he’s got a smirk on his face that threatens a chuckle.
“Not funny, man,” I spit, pulling my hair back from my sweaty forehead and tying it in a ponytail. It’s getting long and slightly annoying, but I don’t want to cut it because Saito Ren wore her hair short, and I refuse to be her anymore.
“You’re late,” Dire says, all business. With the light on, I look around the room. It’s small, a simple square layout without a single window. I can kick the toilet from the end of the bed. There’s an industrial drain in the corner circled by a tattered curtain that works as a shower. A little kitchenette takes up the rest of the gray wall. And in the corner, a small end table laden with personal items…
My face burns with embarrassment as I look over the sad little shrine I’ve erected: spent incense, a chipped bowl of rice, a fresh but small orange, and a static holoimage of my mother, my father cropped out—things I’ve spent precious funds acquiring.
My mother once told me a shrine was meant to reflect on our lost loved ones, but I can’t help feeling that she deserves better than what I’m able to give her.
I put my back to the shrine and finish the patrol of my flat. There’s nowhere for anyone to even possibly hide.
“Your shadow not here?” I ask, looking for the tall, axe-faced man who follows Dire around like a bodyguard despite being smaller than him.
“Falchion is not my shadow.”
Probably outside, then. “Guessing you want to hear about how this also ended in failure?”
Dire steps right into my space, looming over me like a tree. If, you know, trees were sexy. He’s taller than Lito. Dark brown skin, an intense gaze, hair in locs run through with white. Not from a sense of fashion, though—it’s pure aging. He’s as old as my father, which I have to remind myself daily, because godsdamn, he should be on Cytherean billboards, not stuck at the ass end of space.
“Failure?” he mutters, assessing me coldly, stomping any sexy thoughts I have flat. I know what he sees: a person as patchwork as Autarkeia. Auburn hair with my natural black roots starting to show. Long legs stretched to match Ren’s. A sculpted face with my hard jaw and Ren’s soft cheeks. I’m just thankful he can’t see beneath the baggy flight suit to the real monster show beneath: A rib cage too narrow for my hips. Puckered scars where skin meets prosthetic. A body I can’t bring myself to recognize and don’t want to touch.
His gaze is so intense, I clear my throat and drop my eyes.
Weak, Hiro. Just pathetic.
“Another digital ghost,” Dire says, crossing his arms, one a shimmering gold prosthetic. It’s an older model than mine but still moving smoothly thanks to regular maintenance.
I shift around him and sit down on my bed—which now uncomfortably smells like him. “Please don’t give me another name to chase down. This is the fifth person, and he was just as useless as all the rest.”
“Not a name. Not this time. I’ve got something new to show you.”
“Oh?” And here comes the curiosity, welling up inside me despite my better judgment.
“I need to make a call first. You came home late, and I have to make sure everything’s still ready.” Dire’s eyes flick back and forth as he makes a selection on his com-lenses. Just as I settle in to snoop, he crosses the room in two purposeful strides and exits my studio.
“Bye, I guess,” I call after him. He’ll be back. I wonder if he’s calling Hemlock. I lean back on my bed and prepare to wait. At least I’m not in a cramped, smelly closet this time.
I never did get the whole story from Hemlock—does anyone ever?—but he and Dire go way back, and, contrary to all the tales of Dire being some sort of ex-military Martian built for command, Hemlock was actually the man in the shadows who helped Dire set up his smuggling operation to bring goods from both Gean and Icarii space to the outlaws. It’s not surprising then that Dire became part of Autarkeia’s leadership; he had access to stuff everyone wanted.
Of course, Dire’s thieving from Val Akira Labs caught him a lot of heat, and the Icarii are nothing if not consistent; they don’t acknowledge the Asters as threats because of how utterly powerless the majority of them are, and they focus on Dire because he’s a human and people listen to him. They think he’s the reason a few Asters have turned into bad seeds, which suits Hemlock just fine, because he’d rather no one saw him coming.
As for the station, Autarkeia used to be a Synthetic-abandoned squatter’s paradise in gray space, that area between the asteroid belt and the rotation of Jupiter. It was through Dire’s leadership that the station became what it is now—not just a place for the lawless to live, but an actual outlaw kingdom, welcoming anyone who wants to live free and eschew the governmental structures of both the Geans and Icarii. And, with Hemlock’s influence, Asters are welcome here too, living and working alongside groups of people who would shun them on any other planet.
Dire and Hemlock’s cooperation is, consequently, the reason I’m here. At some point during my career as Captain Saito Ren, Dire reported a problem to Hemlock: he was being watched.
I know, I know. No shit, right? But the ones watching him weren’t Gean or Icarii, and while Hemlock and Dire have pulled most of the people of the belt into the Alliance of Autarkeia, there are some who might still be working to undermine their goal, which is, as far as I can tell, independence of the belt from the tyranny of the other governments and fair treatment of the Asters as their own sovereign people.
With that in mind, Hemlock needed someone to root out the group spying on Dire’s operation, and who better than an Icarii Dagger? Good thing Hemlock had one just lying around.
I was a bit skeptical when I first arrived. Dire passed me a compad of the same pictures I showed Rossi tonight, as well as a sparse file on the target, and all I could wonder was why the outlaws couldn’t deal with one person. But now, after four weeks of trying to chase her down, I understand the inherent threat. If this girl is checking into Autarkeia’s offensive and defensive capabilities while only appearing as a data ghost on the com-lenses of people working in key areas around the station, it’s not just her who is the problem. It’s who she represents.
Because there’s only one group powerful enough to perform the kind of trick that allows an agent to roam unfettered, gathering information without even needing a body that could fall into enemy hands: the Synthetics.
And if one Synthetic knows, they all do, connected as they are through the shared consciousness known as the Singularity. Problem is, if the Synthetics have taken an interest in Autarkeia, that’s something that could fuck up not just Hemlock’s overarching plan but the entire galaxy as we know it.
I sit back up when I hear my door unlock. Dire enters like a thunderstorm.
“How’s Hemlock?” I ask, but I swallow my playful tone when I notice Falchion in his long black coat on Dire’s heels. He’s brought his shadow after all.
Falchion finds a corner of the room to loom in like an ugly vulture. The guy’s in his fifties with salt-and-pepper hair and scowls like he’s paid to. But we both know what he’s really paid for. Inside that coat he’s got a dozen ways to kill a man—and that’s without counting the guns.
“Get up.” Dire nudges my foot with his own. “There’s something you need to see.”
I don’t move. “You can’t just show me on a compad?”
“No.” His tone is flat, not to be argued with. “I have two witnesses you need to talk to.”
So that’s who he was calling. “Witnesses to what?”
“The Synthetic contacted us.” I bolt upright. Dire’s face is a closed book despite the significant news. “She left us a message, and we need to respond.”
It takes me no time at all to answer. With things finally turning in my favor, I’m out of the bed and striding for the door. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 4 LUCE
FLAGGED: The sky is captured in heavy streaks of white and gray, calling forth the image of an oncoming storm. An untamed ocean crashes against the rocky shore, reaching up the stones like greedy fingers. A single figure, completely in shadow, scrambles toward a small opening in the rocks. The viewer is left with the impression that it is the darkness, not the ocean, that brings the woman comfort. POSSIBLE LOCATION OF INTEREST?
Description of The Sea Cave, painting by Lucinia sol Lucius
I wait until the peacekeeper turns down Clerk-Maxwell Street and starts his slow meander through the neighborhood of the same name before I clutch my bag closer to my chest and leave the shadowed alley. We have twenty minutes before he returns, so we have to move quickly. Isa is behind me, Shad behind her, and following him are a handful of other Keres members I don’t know beyond their faces. We move in a line until we reach our target: a squat, blocky building butted up next to one taller by half. Despite the height difference, down here on the bottommost layer of Cytherea, the construction is identical, sharp shapes in neutral grays, reflective windows in thin strips. There’s nothing beautiful about the headquarters of the Maintenance Guild.
Shad gestures to one of the guys, and the boy, not even old enough to need geneassisting for his facial hair, pulls off his backpack and fishes out a collapsible ladder. He sets it against the base of the building and presses a button; the ladder snaps securely to the stony surface and extends until it reaches the roof. I’m surprised when Shad gestures for Isa to go first, but then his eyes find mine, hand absently fiddling with the point of his beard, and I know I’m next. As soon as Isa’s far enough up, I grab the rungs and start climbing, the ladder as secure as if it’d been built onto the side of the building.
With my heart beating so hard I feel it in my hands, I reach the roof and survey the space. Other than the wiring and one skylight we’ll have to avoid, it’s flat. There’s a square shack in the corner, containing either access to stairs or some kind of maintenance supplies. I don’t spot any cameras, but that doesn’t mean they’re not here.
I crouch behind a humming generator next to Isa, her rose-gold hair hidden beneath a black scarf, same as my recognizable purple. She winks at me, and I cross my eyes and stick out my tongue. She smiles like she’s holding back a laugh. We used to egg each other on during classes at the Cytherean College of Art and Design, twisting expressions like cartoon characters as our professors critiqued our work. Our instructors said they were teaching us how to accept criticism by being so harsh, but all it taught Isa and me was how to make silly faces without getting caught.
It’s because of Isa that I’m here tonight. The Keres Art Collective doesn’t accept just anyone, but she knew Shad, an upperclassman who graduated three years before us, and arranged for us to meet at a café. I was invited to join the collective later that evening. That was two months ago, and I’m still not sure how I feel about Shad. Despite how Isa talks like he put all the colors in the rainbow, he was rude to me at first, either cutting me off or ignoring me. He didn’t even seem impressed by my portfolio. It wasn’t until he heard my name—sol Lucius, with its inferior nobiliary particle—that I seemed to interest him at all.
Now it’s different; as the rest of the Keres group reaches the roof, they float toward me as if pulled by magnetism. Thanks to Lito, I’ve become something of a minor celebrity among them.
Until yesterday morning, the news only talked about the miraculously returned duelists carrying a message of peace from the Geans. Then came the break-in at Val Akira Labs. Reports of the Gean-Icarii cease-fire disappeared. Forgotten was the possible peace treaty. In its place was my brother’s face on every stream and feed.
Shad is the last up the ladder. After checking the roof, he kneels next to me. “Spread out along the face of Building B,” he says, pointing to the taller construction at the back of the building we stand on. “Do the work just like we talked about it. No surprises.” He casts a quick glance at his wrist, where he wears an antique watch he likes to flash. It projects the time in a blue holograph above its thin black band. “We have eighteen minutes. Go.”
Like duelists, we split up into pairs and spread out along the face of the second building. Isa is my partner, of course, and we’ve practiced the design until we’ve gotten the timing down to fifteen minutes. But now that we’re doing it for real, my heart is pounding with adrenaline. I force myself to take a deep breath in and release it slowly; anxiety makes for shaky hands, and we don’t have any room for error.
