16.6

  “Rhea?” Lucian says, disbelief in his voice.

  I don’t answer. Not because I have nothing to say, but because I don’t know how to say it. I never imagined I’d see him again. I assumed he’d moved on, left the city behind, or maybe even died in the line of duty.

  But he’s here. Almost unchanged from forty-five years ago.

  Before I can find the words, he speaks. “I thought you were dead...”

  “Yeah,” I say softly. “Me too.” I brace myself on my arm and push up to my feet. Everything aches, my posture bent without me meaning to.

  We’re both silent now. The only sound is the fire. This goes on for what feels like forever. We're both unsure of how to feel, what to do, what to even think.

  Then... then, without any warning at all, I lunge forward—not to strike him, not to catch him off guard, but to wrap him in as tight a hug as I know how. His armour is ice cold despite the heat, and he still smells like warehouse oil.

  He returns the hug, holding me steadily, as if I might fall over. “I looked all over the city,” he says. “For years.” There’s a quaver in his voice that feels very much like sorrow.

  “I know.” I back up a little. “It’s really hard to explain how I feel right now. Really hard.”

  “You need to get out of here,” Lucian says urgently. “Back-up’ll be here any minute.”

  “I need that.” I point to the glass case containing the power core. “I’m really sorry. I know it’s your job to protect it, but I can’t leave without it.”

  “I figured.” Lucian grips his baton tightly and lets out a sigh. “You put me in a tough spot here. What’s the point? Sell it? Destroy it?”

  “No,” I say, waving him off. “Look, there’s no time. We can meet up later and I’ll explain everything. I just… I need you to trust me on this. I’m not the crook you think I am.”

  “I never thought you were a crook,” Lucian says honestly.

  More silence.

  He lets out another sigh. “You holding up at the Inn? Same place Jonas got executed?”

  I nod quickly. “Yeah. I’ll wait for you.”

  Lucian doesn’t look entirely sure on what to do. Then again, how can he? He’s an officer working for Calyx Ward. This is his sole function: to defend goods from people like me.

  After giving it some thought, he brings up his baton again and speaks in a low voice: “Alright,” he says. “Hit me.”

  “What?” I pick up my visor and strap it across my eyes.

  “You told me to trust you. Now I’m telling you to trust me. Right in the face.”

  The corner of my lip rises, but then I remember: the camera. If anyone watches the feed later on, he could be charged and arrested for ‘helping a criminal’.

  “Hurry,” he says, louder.

  It feels weird, attacking him now that I know he’s a friend. Still, if it keeps him out of trouble, I don’t really have a choice.

  I clench my fist, not fully, not with force, and go to strike him. To my surprise, he blocks the attack, steps back unsteadily, and strikes the camera down with the baton. After that, he reaches into his interior chest armour and brings out a key attached to a lanyard. He opens the glass case and steps away from it.

  “Take it,” he says.

  “You’re sure?” I say.

  “Just do it,” he says. “I’ll find you. Go!”

  Without a moment’s notice, I hurry over to the case, snatch the power core, and hurry back to the other carriage. I’m about to step out the side-exit when I give one last look back at Lucian. He’s down on one knee, as if critically injured, and tosses the lanyard on the floor.

  He nods at me, and I nod back, then continue out the door.

  There’s a jeep waiting outside for me as promised. Riven is in the driver seat, while Dance and Luck of the Draw are sitting in the back. Dance shouts at me to get a move-on. I hurry into the passenger seat and Riven guns it. By the time we’re away from the train, I hear sirens in the distance. When I look back, sure enough, there are red-and-blue lights.

  We escaped just in the nick of time.

  “What took you so long, Mono?” Dance asks regardless. “Not a scratch on you. Not a drop of blood, either.”

  I don’t answer. Instead, I bring out my MX inhaler, the same one I’d used on Fingers’ lips, and take a puff. The lemony liquid streams down my throat, and within seconds the pain is gone.

  “I hope you weren’t expectin’ a clean retrieval,” says Luck of the Draw, lighting a cigarette in his mouth. He puffs out smoke. “Her girlfriend’s foot got shot off, and she might not make it.”

  I grit my teeth. The MX inhaler doesn’t do much to soothe that sort of pain. The anxiety frankly has me sick to my stomach. “Where are they bringing her?”

  “Like you said,” Luck of the Draw replies, “to a tech surgeon. The church. Still on the way, last I heard. Can’t go anywhere else in this city, after all.”

  “Fingers is on the bed?” Dance says. “Crikies, mate. Not sure how I feel about losin’ her.”

  “We won’t lose her,” I snap, looking back at him.

  “Right,” says Dance. “Sorry, Rhea.” There’s a look in his eyes that is very much compassionate. It’s frankly the first time I’ve seen such a thing from him.

  Despite this, I turn away, thinking it’s best to stop talking about it. “Riven,” I say, looking at her sternly, “bring us there, as fast as you can.”

  Riven cranes her neck from side to side, grips the wheel hard, and speeds off, the tyres bouncing harshly over the endless patch of scrub.

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  It takes us twenty minutes to reach Merrin Holyfield’s church. One of the crew’s jeeps is parked out front, and a broken trail of fresh blood runs from the back of the vehicle straight to the door. When we make it inside, the sanctuary is empty, probably because it’s far too early for conversations with God. The confessional, however, is open, and the blood trail leads straight through it.

  I sprint through it. I don’t know why. Whether I make it in time won’t change what’s already happened. No matter how I turn it over in my head, this is my fault. I’m the reason her foot was blown off. The engage strategy was my idea, and mine alone. If I’d communicated more clearly, if I’d slowed things down even a little, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe I wouldn’t be sprinting, sweating, fighting the urge to cry.

  I’ve already lost too many people. My mom. My dad. Hell, my entire life.

  You can’t die on me.

  Down in the undercroft, where everything is dark and smells of mold, the black-market tech area is still up and running. The electrical tower at the centre seems to be working overtime. A quick glance at the far end tells me why: Fingers is hooked up to a surgical bed, the very same one she’d been on when getting her upgrades, cables and tubing webbing across her torso. The machine beside her, which is supposed to monitor her vitals, flickers with red warning lights while her heart rate bleeps up and down on the ECG.

  Yeah. I know what you were thinking. Don’t worry. Happens all the time. I still remember the way she spoke to me when we first met: with kindness, but also unpredictability. Nice to see another woman in here. So I won’t go too hard on you. Won’t go soft either. You want to run with us, I need credentials.

  The tech surgeon barely looks up when I hurry over. He’s too busy working the clamps and injectors. A pressure cuff cinches high on Fingers’ thigh, mechanical teeth biting down to slow the bleeding. Another arm swings overhead, deploying a cauteriser that hisses with heat.

  Her face is horrid and pale and covered in sweat and almost every little bit of her looks like it’s on the edge. I barely hear myself ask the question: “Is she alright?” In fact, I’m not sure I even do ask it. Everything, every sound, every awful stutter of light, is nothing but a blur.

  A big, hazy blur.

  “You can save her, right?” I ask with panic.

  The tech surgeon sleeves a bead of sweat from his brow. “We are past the point of comfort, madame.” His accent is distinctly French, and completely factual. His cybernetic hands never stop moving. “She is in hypovolemic shock. If her pressure drops again, her heart will follow.”

  Another clamp locks into place with a hard metallic snap. Fingers jerks against the restraints, a low sound tearing out of her throat before the sedatives pull her back under. The cauteriser flares brighter. The smell hits a second later. Burned flesh and iron.

  “She’s dying,” I say. It comes out flat. Stupidly obvious.

  “Please do not interrupt me,” he says.

  The ECG staggers, finding a rhythm it clearly doesn’t want to keep. The surgeon reaches for a syringe, plunges it into a port at her neck.

  I move around to the right side, getting down on my knee next to her. Her eyes are still open, still watching, still feeling everything that’s happening to her. She looks at me, her mouth hanging, as if it wants to speak but can’t quite manage the task.

  Knew you had some brains in that thick chrome dome of yours, Fingers said. I think I’ll like you, Rhea. Might have to hang on to you after all this is said and done.

  I remember the dockyard, the way we stood there together, working through a plan to slip onto the cargo ship.

  You think? I laughed, even though it wasn’t all that funny. Tellin’ you, once we’re done with that Techstrum job or whatever you wanna call it, that big league, I’m packin’ my pockets and takin’ off towards the sunset like in those old westerns. Gonna take my pretty chrome dome for a test run in the scrubland.

  Something cold slips out from my eye. Then something cold slips out from my nose. Then… then I realise… But how is it possible? How am I able to cry? These artificial sockets aren’t designed for tears.

  “Is she alright?” I hear Dance shout, and seconds later: “Oh, dear Lord.”

  “I need blood,” says the tech surgeon. “Something compatible.”

  “Take mine,” I say through the tears, through my ugly, ruddy face.

  “No,” he says softly. “Yours will not do. Her blood type is Type A. Yours is Type O, madame.”

  “I have Type A,” a voice says, and it takes me a second to realise that it’s Riven.

  The surgeon finally looks up. Really looks. His eyes flick from Riven to the monitors, then back again. “You are certain?” he asks.

  Riven nods, already rolling up her sleeve. “Had to get tested when I started my job at the logistics factory. Type A positive.”

  “Good.” The surgeon gestures sharply to the side of the bed, where a spare gurney waits. “Place your arm here, madame. There is no time to waste.”

  Within minutes, Riven has her arm strapped to the gurney, and the surgeon wraps a tourniquet around it. He sticks a thick needle in it. Dark red blood begins to flow through the tubing.

  The ECG spikes, then dips again.

  The memories become so intense that it feels as if I’m standing right in them. Right there, on top of a red-brick building by the market, the one where a crazy merchant almost chopped a child’s arm off for stealing.

  Thanks, Fingers, I said.

  For? she said.

  Just… thanks.

  She looked at me, perplexed, then patted my shoulder before walking towards the stairway. C’mon. Gettin’ late.

  And she had been right. The sun had completely sunk below the horizon, leaving only the starless evening.

  But before she walked down those grated rooftop stairs, I said to her:

  I know it’s difficult putting your trust in someone like me.

  She looked back at me, hands stuffed in her beige coat pockets. What makes you say that?

  My entire story doesn’t make sense, I said. Waking up under a bridge, no memory, aim that perfect. Almost got you killed on my very first job. I know you said every decision I make in this city has a consequence, but how can you, you know, be sure that putting faith in me doesn’t have a consequence?

  She snorted. What? You a philosopher now? And she was quiet for a time, before sighing. She walked back to me. The truth is, sometimes faith is all you really have.

  I looked at her, puzzled. What do you mean?

  Well, I mean sometimes you simply have to hope there’s some good in the world, she said. If I lived my whole life thinking everyone was out to get me, then I wouldn’t have any of the friends I have now. Wouldn’t have Raze or Vander or Cormac or that sick bastard Dance. I have faith you’re not a backstabber. I have faith you’re not from a gang. I have faith you’re not trying to kill me.

  Some quiet. Only the rain tapping against the rooftop was brave enough to interrupt it.

  Fingers looked to the sky. I have faith that, one day, I’ll see my parents in the afterlife. Now I’m not sayin’ I believe God exists or anything, but I am sayin’ it’s awfully suspicious that this world is…

  Fucked up?

  No, she said. It’s just… if there’s no God, then why is the world the way it is, know? Why isn’t everything cold, meaningless, grey? If there’s no God, why have colour at all? Why design a system based on survival? And if we’re conscious, why can’t something greater be?

  It’s definitely not an easy question to answer, I said.

  No, she said. It isn’t. And I guess that’s the point. Faith isn’t supposed to be easy. Sometimes you’re supposed to question things, your decisions, your beliefs, what makes you get up in the morning. But the important bit is to hold on to that faith, because without it, you’ll end up dead—for real, this time.

  So, in a sense, you like to take risks? I asked.

  Call it what you want, Fingers said. It all means the same thing.

  I don’t think I fully understood the points she was making back then. Not at all, to be completely honest. But now I do.

  Sometimes, faith is all you really have.

  I hope you see your parents again too, I said. One day.