“Tried that.” My hand instinctively drifts to my chest where the scars from the Gold are hidden under my suit jacket. I notice her watching my hand. I drop it. “Didn’t take.” Her datapad buzzes on her arm. “On call?” I ask. She silences it without looking down.
“Grand theft’s gone up. They’ve got a task force now. The Sovereign is tired of this city’s culture being plundered for the highest bidder.”
“The Sovereign, eh. How’s old Lionheart? Still giving out Amnesty passes to murderers and slavers?”
“That still under your skin?”
“Grays: short in life, long in memory. Forget that little jingle? Tell me, does the new task force have a pretty insignia? I bet they do. Maybe a flying tiger or a lion with a sword in its lustrous mouth?”
“You were the one who chose to leave the Rising, Eph.”
“You know why I left.”
“If you didn’t like how things were going, you could have stuck around, made a difference. But I guess it’s easier sitting in the cheap seats, throwing bottles.”
“Make a difference?” I smile nastily. “You know, when the Hyperion Trials started, I thought there’d finally be some justice. Honest to Jove. I thought the Golds would finally pay the bill. Even after Endymion, even after what they did to my boys…” I touch my chest again. “But then your Sovereign got cold feet. Sure, some Society military brass, some high-up psychos from the Board of Quality Control got life in Deepgrave, but more got full pardons because she needed their men, their money, their ships. So much for justice.”
Holiday holds my gaze, willful.
After Trigg died on that Martian peak, I joined the Rising. More for revenge than anything else. I wasn’t a believer. Eventually they put my Piraeus and legion-honed skills and understanding of Gold culture to use hunting Peerless war criminals down. Used to call ourselves “scar hunters.” Just another slick name.
I know I shouldn’t press the politics with her. She’s as thick in the head and set in her ways as ever. Just another grunt seduced by the pretty demigods. But the booze is making me care.
“You know, every time I saw a Gold slaver walk free for the sake of ‘the war effort,’ it was like watching them spit on Trigg’s grave. Aja might be dust, but men and women just like that bitch walk the worlds because the people holding your leash couldn’t follow through. Shoulda put a Gray as Sovereign. At least we finish shit.”
I drain my glass for emphasis and feel like an idiot talking head on an HC show. Cute empty words and flashy maxims.
“You know I can’t help you if you’re caught on a job,” she says.
And like that, I’m dismissed because she’s always right, and I’m always just running my mouth. “Public urination is a victimless crime,” I say with a smile. I pull out a burner and light it.
“I meant what I said last time.”
“About the Hyperion Chimera match? I’d have lost a fortune on that bet. Embarrassing spectacle. But fauxWar is unpredictable, neh? Karachi is a safer bet.”
“The offer is still on the table, Eph. We could use a man like you. Come back. Help us unwind the Syndicate. You can save lives.”
“I am saving a life. Mine. By staying as far away from your masters as humanly possible. Shame Trigg didn’t get the same chance.”
She watches me through the smoke I blow in her face. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“Be more specific.”
“This.” She looks around the bar. “This isn’t for him. It’s not even for me. It’s for you. So you can sink in it and let it rot you. That’s not what he would have wanted.”
“What would he have wanted?”
“For you to have a life. A purpose.”
I roll my eyes. “Why’d you bother to come? I didn’t make you.”
“Because my brother loved you,” she says sharply. She lowers her voice. “He would have wanted more for you than this.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have gotten him killed.”
The old Holiday wouldn’t hit me. “It’s been ten years, asshole. You have to let him go or it’s gonna eat you up.”
I shrug. “What’s left to eat?” I didn’t deserve her brother’s love, and I sure as shit don’t need her pity. I flag down the bartender and he comes over with another bottle. Holiday shakes her head as I pour myself a glass.
“I’m not coming back here next year.”
“So sorry. Will miss you. Break the chains, and all that.” She stands and stares down at me, about to say something spiteful, but she swallows it down, enraging me because I can smell the pity. “You know what just rubs me raw?” I say up to her. “You look down at me because you’re in that little uniform and you think me cheap. But you’re the one too stupid to realize you’re wearing a collar. You’re the one he’d be ashamed of.”
“The only good thing about him being dead is that he doesn’t have to see you like this. So long, Eph.” At the door, she glances back down at her datapad and a shadow of fear passes over her face from what she sees there. Then she’s gone into the rain.
Two glasses later, I abandon the bottle and stumble out of the bar and onto the sidewalk. Rain drips its way through the labyrinth of city above and below, growing fouler by the level. I go to the edge of the sidewalk and peer over the rusted metal rail down into the airway thoroughfare. It’s a thousand-meter drop to the Mass’s fetid ground level. Flying cars and taxis blink through the gathering fog. From the sides of hulking buildings, advertisements seep miasma stains of neon greens and violent reds into the air like rainbow pus. On a digital billboard, a six-story Red child is wandering alone in the desert. Lips cracked. Skin burnt absurdly. His foot strikes something in the sand, and eagerly he begins to dig and lo, he discovers something buried. A bottle. Feverishly he twists off the top and takes a drink. He laughs with delight and holds the glistening bottle up to the sun, where it sparkles and beads with divine drops of perspiration. The word AMBROSIA sparkles onto the screen, a little wing-heel logo in the corner.
A distant roar comes from the sky as a large passenger ship leaves its berth at AID, aimed at the invisible stars. I drink from my bottle, wishing I’d never left Hyperion for the Mass. Wishing I’d gone to a Pearl club and found a Pink to swallow my attention. Holiday was right about one thing; this just picks at the wound. But if I don’t pick, then it feels like it didn’t matter. And if didn’t matter, then neither do I.