I look up as Volga trudges out onto the balcony. We came directly from our meeting with the Duke and paid cash for one of the suites at the penthouse level. They are sound-sealed and come with autonomous security systems as well as smoked glass for privacy. I reach under my armpit for the reassuring feel of my Omnivore only to grip empty leather. I’m naked without that gun.
I look back down at the city that has been my home since my mother spat me out, the youngest pup of six. I was just a government check to her. And to the government, I was just another dog for the pack. I never tricked myself into thinking my city cared about me, but I cared for it in a way I never cared for the Society. I fought to free it. I fought for it when Gold came to reclaim it. Now it changes around me. Old swallowed by new. And at the heart of the new is something I don’t understand. Some wild, frenzied clamor for power, for riches—a war of all against all.
I played along, but it wasn’t me.
The more I think about the Syndicate, the more I understand it was only natural that they would grow bored of running the petty crime of this moon. Of course they would reach for the next rung, for politics. I gave them a boost.
Why do they want the children?
I thought I could close the book on this job just like the rest. But this is different, bigger, and I can’t fool myself into shrinking it down. Cyra and Dano are dead because I pulled them into this. Not just the job with the Syndicate, but this life. I look across the deck at Volga, who has her arms barricaded around her chest like bulwarks. My only friend. She wasn’t a criminal till she met me. She was in love with the idea of the city. So many people from so many places. Then I pulled her into the shadows because I needed a guard dog. She’d be better off without me. Everyone is better off without me.
In the grip of the zoladone, the idea is served cold, wrapped pristine in logic.
Sound from the holoNews trickles from the suite’s living room out onto the balcony. A rainstorm is coming for Hyperion. The Reaper has been spotted on Mars and Obsidians are disappearing all over the Republic. There’s been no news of the kidnapping on the holos. Nothing but a blip of how a government ship went down from mechanical failure and that all on board survived.
The silence is part of the game.
The Sovereign is compromised. They have her son. But she keeps it a secret to keep Dancer and his ilk from getting the upper hand on her. So what will the Syndicate demand as ransom? That is the trillion-credit question.
“Do you regret it?” Volga asks.
“Be more specific. Selling children? No. Love that. Being mocked by a psychopathic crimelord and now hunted by sociopathic Golds? Fun stuff. Or maybe having our colleagues butchered in front of us?” Feeling the tension in my neck and bubbling in my brain, I pull out a second zoladone and roll it around in my palm. I’m about to down it to feel the sweet numbness, when Volga knocks it out of my hand and takes the dispenser off the table beside me.
“Volga, don’t be a twat.”
“No more.”
“Give me the dispenser. Volga…”
“I am tired of you walking around asleep. Tired of seeing you numb. It’s too easy for you. Feel bad, pop pill. Snort dust. Drink booze. Feel good.”
“Do I look like someone who feels good?”
“No.” Her big lips curl. “You feel nothing.”
“Give me the dispenser.”
“No.”
“Volga, you pale shit. Give me my dispenser.”
“You are not my master. Come take it if you want it,” she says with a shrug. I lunge up for it, and she pushes me to the side so I trip over one of the chairs and crash down, a blinding pain going through the old wound in my right knee. She doesn’t apologize when I crawl up from the chair.
“Give it back.”
“Fetch.” She throws it off the balcony and it spirals down into the aerial traffic beneath. I rush to the edge and watch it disappear from sight.
“You little monster,” I mutter.
Her nose flares wide. She pushes me again with her left hand, her huge strength sending me stumbling back. My cracked ribs lance with pain. I can’t breathe. She comes after me and hits me in the chest again, knocking me off my feet. I fall hard on the marble balcony, shoulder blades smacking into the stone.
“Do you feel anything now?” she asks.
“Oh, fuck…off.” I cough.
She puts a boot in my stomach and begins to push down. “Now?” With my right hand I reach into my boot to grab the stunner there. I jam it into her leg. Her skin underneath her pants crackles as it burns. She grimaces in pain, her eyes going dark as the pain summons the bloodlust hidden in her genes. “Volga…” I say. “Volga, no!” She lifts me up in a rage, easy as a pillow, and holds me with both hands, about to throw me over the edge of the balcony. I stare at the aerials hundreds of meters below.
“Do it,” I sneer. “Go on. Do it, you monster.”
The grip loosens and my world reorients as she sets me down. I sit there on the ground, breathing heavily. She collapses into the chair, almost breaking it, and stares at me with tears in her eyes. “I’m not a monster. I’m not.” She looks up at me, her eyes puffy and swollen. “But you are. They were just children.”
“You knew what we were trying to do,” I say, rubbing my ribs. She definitely cracked a few more. “That someone could die. Now you cry about it because you can’t handle the guilt?” I snort. “Grow up. You did the deed. Same as me. Now go buy yourself a spine and a good fuck with all that blood money. Jove knows you need both.” She stares at me as if she can’t believe what she’s hearing. I don’t know what else she expected. The deed’s done. Time to move on. “Why’d you even go along with it if your panties were in such a bunch?”
“I did it for you!” she says in a pitiful voice. “I did it because you needed me. I’ve always needed you. You brought me here. You’re my family. And I’ve never been able to do anything for you. Every time I try, you get angry. ‘Go home, Volga. Fuck off, Volga.’ But here. This. It was something I could do to help. I could have your back, like you have mine. I did not know it would be so hard.”
She sits there trying to stop crying. Her huge shoulders heave up and down.
I don’t know what to do. “Just think of the new adventures we are about to begin,” I say distantly. “A tour of Africa. The seafood. The animals. The whores of the Barbary Coast!”
She looks up with puffy eyes. “Do you think they will kill them?”
“No. They won’t kill them. You heard the Duke. No rough stuff. What use is a dead hostage? They’ll want more money or something, I guess. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It’s not our business.”
“Not our business? We’re a part of this, Ephraim. Part of the Republic.”
“Why? ’Cause we live here? That’s the sort of shit they want you to think so you go along thinking you got skin in the game. It’s all a scam, princess. You’re never fighting for yourself. You’re always fighting for them. Lune, Augustus, Reaper, what’s the damn difference?”
“Why are you like this?”
“Like what?”
“Evil.”
I sigh. “I’m not evil.”
“Then what are you?”
“Self-aware. You can’t take care of anyone. That’s not how it works. All you can do is take care of yourself. No one else is going to.”