The Exodus Towers #1

Wits gathered, he jogged back to the still-moving aura tower, giving it a small course correction as the road turned.
Belém, Brazil

28.APR.2283

SKYLER KEPT A slow pace on the way back to base camp. Mock conversations played out in his mind about how to explain what he’d seen. The colonists were scientists for the most part, and would ask him endless questions.

The truth was he had no idea what he’d seen. A subhuman, he thought, being—transformed? Enveloped? Armored? Hell, he might have it reversed. What if the ship was creating them? Clones, or something.

He shook his head. Speculation accomplished little, and he could leave that to campfire chats among the colonists. As soon as Tania and the others voted to do so, he’d take a team back there and figure out what new toy the Builders had sent.

At the city outskirts he guided the alien tower over a short bridge that spanned a man-made tributary. Despite years of neglect, runoff still raced toward the Rio Pará. He nudged the tower around a derelict Toyota. The tall mass glided as if it weighed no more than Skyler himself.

He’d spent more time than he cared to admit pondering the point of the devices. Their usefulness was obvious: movable pockets of precious aura to fend off SUBS. His immunity didn’t lessen an appreciation for the gift.

But why? Usefulness aside, what were the bloody Builders up to? He shook his head again. More speculation. A pointless topic to ponder. Everyone at base camp had theories, from plausible to crazy and everything in between.

Someone had suggested that perhaps the Builders had intended to colonize Earth, had sent their construction vessels, but had themselves died along the way. That or the project lost funding, someone had joked. Skyler had barked a hearty laugh at that. “What a terrifying thought,” he’d said, “that they’re just as f*cked-up as we are.”

Across the bridge he found himself in Belém’s vast outer slum. Kilometer after kilometer of shanty homes, hopeless churches, and the occasional grouping of shops and taverns. All abandoned, all in some state of embalmment by the unchecked growth of the rainforest. Skeletal corpses littered the ground with such number that they became as mundane as trees.

Skyler pulled the tourist’s map from his breast pocket, along with a permanent pen. Once he found his bearings, he began to walk again and make abbreviated notes. A pharmacy he noted with “rx.” Taverns and liquor stores got a little happy face. A circle around the marking meant he’d gone inside and found it to contain useful things. An X meant nothing worthwhile remained. The map had around fifty such markings already, all within a few kilometers of the Elevator. He’d barely explored the city at all yet.

For an instant his eyes lingered on the mark he’d made the day before. IMMUNE. The vision of that young woman, white dress billowing about her perfect legs, clouded his mind’s eye. He pictured her naked backside as she ran from him across the field. A longing stirred within him and he mentally slapped himself back to reality.

He drew a little monster wherever he encountered a subhuman. In the month since touchdown, only a handful had been encountered, until yesterday. The bizarre scene at that crash site explained their absence across the rest of the region. He drew a bold circle around the rough location of the crashed shell ship.

A chill coursed through his body and Skyler paused. He let the tower drift on and ducked into the shadow of a single-room home made of lashed-together aluminum siding. For a long minute he stood there, studying the surrounding homes. Nothing moved, save the occasional lizard sprinting across a wall, or birds darting from tree to electric pole.

He’d been deep in thought, and sensed something, heard something perhaps. The moment passed. With nothing else to go on, he readied his weapon just in case and jogged to catch up to the aura tower.

Halfway there he heard the faint sound again. A wump wump wump, scarcely loud enough to be heard over the constant background of birds, insects, and countless drips of runoff water.

A machine gun. A big one, at that. Not like the weapons some of the colonists carried.

He pushed the tower around a corner in the road to get a view south, toward the space elevator.

Sunlight caught the thin cord like a strand of spider silk. Skyler followed it to the ground and saw birds. Hundreds of them, streaming from the trees that surrounded base camp.

He started to run.

Some stupid sense of duty kept him from abandoning the aura tower altogether.

He pushed and guided it through the uneven grid of streets, around abandoned vehicles and the occasional tree sprouting right through the road.

The gunfire had stopped. Or at least he hadn’t heard any more over his own labored breathing.

With the aura tower in tow it took almost an hour to weave his way through the city before he found familiar terrain. The Elevator had implanted near a tributary that fed into the Rio Guamá, on the city’s southern edge. A university campus to the west were the nearest buildings of any real size, ringed by a two-meter-high stucco wall that had been white half a decade ago. Vines blanketed the surface now.

Skyler slowed the tower as he passed the campus entrance.

There were tire tracks in the mottled road. Fresh ones, from multiple vehicles.

Baffled and concerned, he let the massive object amble along on its own while he kept it within arm’s reach. He moved around to its side, keeping it to his left and the stucco wall on his right.

At the edge of the wall, base camp came into view. He saw the sign first, hand painted on a plank of wood. CAMP EXODUS. One of the colonists had made it of their own accord and nailed it to a fence post. In a colony where every little decision required hours of pointless debate, Skyler reveled in the fact that the name had been coined on a whim and stuck. It wasn’t the greatest name, not by a long shot, but he could only imagine what sort of stupid blandness a consensus would have arrived at. A hundred tents of varying size and color dominated the mottled field beyond, interrupted here and there by shipping containers that constituted the communal buildings—meeting hall, mess, and storage.

The aura towers were interspersed throughout all of these, arranged now in concentric circles, with the smallest ones at the outside.

In between these towers and his position, a dozen or more military and police vehicles were parked, forming an inverted wedge around the landward part of the colony. At least two had gunners manning turrets, sweeping back and forth in slow arcs.

Skyler counted roughly twenty men and women, in matching black uniforms, fanned out across the line, weapons in hand. Beyond them, colonists were standing in clumps, hands raised. Some of the black-clad intruders were barking orders at them, too far away for Skyler to hear the words.

Nightcliff? No. Impossible. Unlikely that they could have found the colony, and even more ridiculous that they could get so many fresh ground vehicles halfway across the globe. Who then?

He realized with sudden panic that he was standing in the open, a few steps out from the cover of the wall. The aura tower he’d brought back now drifted slowly east in blissful, uncaring ignorance of its surroundings. Its path, Skyler realized, would take it straight into the side of an armored personnel carrier.

The scene gripped him. He knew he should back away, find cover, and watch, but the ambling tower’s collision course was like watching a car wreck in slow motion. Two of the militant intruders sat atop the vehicle, their posture relaxed, their focus on the colony. Skyler thought of shouting a warning but found he couldn’t. He knew the tower would halt its own progress, but the men sitting there might not. They’d just see a giant black obelisk bearing down on them—

One of the intruders, a dark-skinned man, finally turned enough to see the shape looming, a second before impact. He shouted something and leapt from the roof of the massive truck. His partner dove off the other side, an instant before the tower reached them.

The aura tower hit the side of the vehicle, rocking it slightly before coming to a rest.

A moment of confusion passed. The closer man had come up on all fours, looking at the huge shape. Others from the group called out. Some of the militants were running over to investigate.

The man on the ground, though, stared directly at Skyler.

He rocked back onto his knees and raised an assault rifle.

Skyler took a gamble with his life. He turned and ran, rather than taking cover. Bullets hissed over his head even as the crackle from the gun reached him. The man was firing from the hip, a shot that only worked in movies and sensories.

A chorus of alarmed shouts followed. Skyler figured the man would correct his position and take a more calculated shot next, so he grasped a thick vine that ran horizontally along the old university wall and used it to propel himself up and over the barricade.

He landed hard in a courtyard on the other side, in knee-high wild grass. A plan formed on pure instinct: Move west, into the city. Disappear.

Weaving through the old campus at a full sprint, Skyler reached the wall on the western side in less than a minute, the shouts at his back growing dimmer with each second. He spotted a section of wall that had partially collapsed, and hurdled it without breaking stride. The ground beyond was muddy and he slipped on it, tumbling and rolling. Old wounds complained, a din he knew he could shove from his mind. He’d be a mess in the morning, assuming he survived that long.

A quick glance back proved inconclusive. He heard activity but saw nothing. Looking west, he scanned the low buildings along the city edge, looking for a good place to go to ground.

Behind him came the sound of bulky tires crushing rock and soil, and the high-pitched hum of electric motors.

Shit.

He began to run again. A snap decision made, he raced toward the wide river and the dockyards that lined it.

The realization hit him as he reached the dockyard: The newcomers must be immunes.

They’d arrived in that hodgepodge armada of combat vehicles without any aura towers to protect them. No other explanation made sense. There were deep implications his brain desperately wanted to analyze, but the roar of tires on the tortured road behind him renewed his focus.

Skyler raced through an open gate and down a steeply sloped asphalt road that led to trampled shore. The murky Rio Guamá stretched more than a kilometer wide here, still swelled by the rainy season. A line of trees on the horizon marked the far shore, too far to swim. On this, the northern side, long wooden docks stretched out fifty meters over the water, as far as Skyler could see. Two- and three-story warehouses, all broken windows and weathered walls, backed the crumbling structures.

Corpses of watercraft filled the spaces between docks. Many were cargo ships and flat barges, faded logos of international produce companies still visible on their sides. The rest were smaller, recreational, likely borne down the fast river over the years only to snag here on the piers. Amassed around the boats were islands of trash, dead trees, and other debris. The smell of mold, dead fish, and rotting vegetation permeated everything and churned his stomach.

Skyler slowed when his feet met the wooden slats of the dock. Many of the boards were black and rotten, and he guessed the massive vehicle chasing him would fall right through. He chanced a glance back and saw the beast careening down the ramp he’d just traversed. Knobby tires under an angular black shell of riveted steel. An anti-riot car, he guessed. It looked like it had been painted black recently, with hints of an FNSP logo—national police—underneath. A shielded turret topped the vehicle, and Skyler could see someone’s helmet behind the slotted plate. The gunner struggled to keep his aim as the vehicle careened down the ramp.

Skyler angled toward a gap between warehouses just as the buzz from the chain gun shattered the quiet of the shore. Shards of rotten wood filled the air around him. Skyler covered the sides of his face with both arms and high-stepped the last few meters until he’d safely moved behind the building.

His heart raced, blood pulsing in his ears. His breaths came in short bursts as the rush of the narrow escape swelled through him. Skyler vaulted himself over a stack of blue plastic fruit crates and kept running, angling toward the wall of the next building over. He came to an open door and took a glance in, only to find it a horrible rotting mess. Rats were everywhere, bolting for shelter when he stepped into view. The smell of the place forced him to cover his mouth and nose. He moved on, rushing around the back of the building, dancing around abandoned skid-steers and electric forklifts.

Shrieking tires and anxious shouts were heard behind him. They’d stopped short of driving onto the dock then, killing Skyler’s hopes for a farcical end to the chase. He let his pace dip so that he could get his breathing under control. Everything stank, worse than even Darwin’s choked shoreline. The odor brought tears to his eyes.

He jumped over a corpse, a dockworker judging by the faded coveralls. Nothing but bone and some gray skin with matted hair underneath the brittle clothing now. Bodies were everywhere in the urban places Skyler had visited, but once in a while he saw one that still disturbed him. They were a hard reminder of the billions that died in the first months of the disease.

He heard footsteps somewhere behind, and took the next corner to put himself between buildings again, facing the brownish river now. Guessing his pursuers would flank him from both ends, he stopped and lay down on the grimy wood. A hard three-count later, he rolled back around the wall with his gun at the ready.

The man pursuing him was looking down, stepping around the decayed body of the dockworker.

Skyler lined up the red dot of his holo-sight on the man’s chest and squeezed off two rounds. The gun’s sight made his aim virtually flawless, and the poor fellow collapsed on top of the body that already lay there. One more to the tally.

A pang of regret gripped him for shooting a fellow immune, something he’d never done before. The sound of approaching footsteps meant he would have to repeat the performance if he didn’t get away. So Skyler set aside his instinctual urge to search the body, stood, and ran.

Moving quickly again, he dashed along the backside of the warehouses, scaling one chain-link fence and ducking through a gap in another. Near the end of the dockyard he heard shouts off to his left, over a series of ragged grunts.

Then came a familiar wail.

Subhumans.

He never thought their presence would be so welcome.

Against a backdrop of shouting and gunfire, Skyler left the dockyard and bolted straight into the dense slums of Belém, head thick with confusion and numbing fear.
Melville Station

29.APR.2283

TANIA COULD NOT look Zane Platz in the eye.

He sat across the metal table from her, drumming his fingers like his older brother had sometimes done. Between them lay the comm, their link to the ground, theoretically. Nothing had come across in forty-eight hours.

They should be celebrating. The first climber to rise from Belém with a significant shipment of air and water was supposed to have arrived hours ago, a critical milestone in the colony’s survival. But the climber never left the ground. Instead Tania had seen Karl thrown violently across the screen, then a hand deactivating the camera. Five seconds later a simple message filled the screen: “Connection lost.”

“Something has to be done, Tania,” Zane said, in a quiet and pitiful voice.

People, Karl had said, not subhumans. People. It couldn’t have been a mistake.

“Tania …”

She kept her eyes on the comm. “What did he mean, ‘Who are you people?’ What people?”

Zane ran a hand over his tired face. “We’ve been over this many times.”

“Suppose Blackfield snuck an aircraft in and has taken over? They could be on their way up.”

“The controller still shows red. The climber is attached, but it hasn’t left Belém.”

Tania grimaced. “What other explanation is there?”

Zane broke eye contact at that. He stared at the table in front of him, a vein visibly pulsing at his temple. After a moment he pinched the bridge of his nose and winced. “I should have a lie-down.”

Tania studied him. His face contorted in pain for a few seconds, then he seemed to relax. “Okay. We can talk later,” she started.

“My headache can wait,” he grumbled. “This decision can’t.”

“Maybe it’s the Builders,” Tim said. He leaned against the wall by the closed conference room door, a steaming cup of tea in his hand. “Maybe they look like us, like people.”

Zane did a half turn in his chair. “You’re worse than she is.”

“I’m just saying—”

“Tania,” Zane said, gathering himself, “we can’t continue to sit here and speculate endlessly. It’s been two months since we had a solid shipment of consumables. We’ll have to evacuate soon. Crops are starting to brown—”

“I know,” she said.

“Something’s gone wrong down there, and we need to act—”

“I know, dammit!” She looked up at him, finally. Met his eyes, saw the thick black bags under them. She saw his fear, his yearning to fix things, but most of all she saw his plea for someone, anyone, to make a decision. Zane had spent his whole life leaving the decisions to his deceased brother, Neil. In many ways she had, too, and she wondered if Zane saw the same plea in her eyes. She turned back to the screen. “The climber controls show red. We can’t send anyone down to investigate, or rescue them, or anything else.”

Zane and Tim both stared at her with glum expressions.

“Worse,” she added, “we can’t evacuate.”

“Not to Belém,” Tim whispered.

A long silence followed. Until now, no one had voiced that option. Tania forced herself not to speak until she could control her voice. “Returning to the Darwin Elevator is a last resort, agreed?”

“Personally, I’d rather suffocate,” Zane said.

“Hear, hear,” said Tim.

Unable to stare at the comm any longer, Tania stood and paced the back wall of the room. Tim’s posture by the door made her feel trapped.

Think, think.

More than anything she wished she could talk to Skyler. Increasingly gruff attitude aside, he still had a certain knack for laying out stark options in a clear manner. Somehow it made things easier. Taking a deep breath, Tania decided to try the technique herself.

“Let’s assume for now that Nightcliff has taken over the ground colony below us.”

“We don’t know—”

“Would you just listen for a moment, please?”

Zane closed his mouth and gave a slow nod. Despite his words, she caught a glimmer of relief in his eyes.

“Nightcliff holds the ground. Fine. Let’s get Blackfield on the comm, then, and find a way to resolve this. We still hold the farms.”

“You’d think he would have contacted us by now,” Zane mused.

“If they hold the Elevator base, the air, and the water,” Tim said, “we’re in no position to negotiate.”

“We have to try,” Tania said. “It’s the only logical action at this point. Unless you have other ideas?”

Neither man offered a suggestion.

“Okay, settled,” Tania said. “Tim, see if you can get us a connection, and patch it through here, please.”

“You got it,” he replied.

A half hour later, Tania found herself looking at Russell Blackfield. He looked like he always did. His blond hair was uncombed and close-cropped, and stubble shadowed his face. His eyes perpetually gave the impression that he was about to spar and wanted to win.

“A video feed this time,” he said with a grin. “How lucky for me.”

She made a conscious effort to keep her face blank. They’d spoken only three times since she’d tried to kill him, and she’d avoided video in those calls lest he see the fear and uncertainty in her face. This time she decided it was worth the risk, so that she could study his expression as well.

“Hello, Russell.”

The man nodded. “Nice to see you, too. I’d forgotten what a lovely woman you are.”

Tania fought to keep a wave of revulsion behind her mask. Dark memories of a dank cell below Nightcliff, two foul-smelling guards scrubbing her naked body as she stared at herself in the wall-sized mirror, retreating within, knowing somewhere in a deep corner of her mind that Blackfield watched from the other side. She’d refused to acknowledge it, and sat there in numb stillness with no effort to cover herself. The lack of struggle had been seen as an invitation to continue. A shudder rippled through her.

“Talkative as ever,” Russell added.

“We need to discuss the situation here,” she said, surprised at her own words.

His eyes dipped for a moment, and he shifted his weight in his seat. “Was our second delivery of slaves—pardonnez moi, volunteers—not up to snuff?”

Tania kept her eyes on the screen, but in the corner of her field of view she could see Zane Platz. His eyebrows went up, and she knew they shared the same thought: Russell doesn’t know. He doesn’t know about the silenced colony, he doesn’t even know where they are. The tone of his voice told her this with absolute certainty.

“The new colonists will do fine,” she lied. “We’re still placing them.”

“Oh, colonists. What an interesting word to use, as it implies a colony.”

Dammit.

A sarcastic grin stretched across his face. “Let me know when you’re ready for more.”

Tania drew a breath. “About that. We would like to change the parameters of the next shipment.”

“Want a few whores this time? We’ve got plenty of them. Nothing keeps a bunch of cooped-up men happy like a few loose tarts.”

She refused to be baited. “No, thanks.”

“Handling the needs of the men yourself?”

If not for their predicament, she would have ended the call right then. She would let Darwin starve, just to avoid ever speaking to this man again. If only … if only the colony wasn’t offline. If only supply shipments were coming in at a reliable pace. If only they’d had more time to think this whole endeavor through. If only Skyler would rescue me again so Russell didn’t have to, she thought, lamely.

Tania wanted to slap herself for that. She felt weak and helpless, and despised that feeling even more than she despised the man on the screen in front of her.

There were no other options though. Time was not on their side, either. Something had to be done. “No people this time, Russell. We’d like you to deliver two standard shipments of air and water.”

Russell’s laughter came through the speaker so loud that Tania winced.

Across the table, Zane had his hands over his face. He was shaking his head.

What? Tania mouthed, but Zane didn’t see.

“Wow,” Russell said, his chuckling finally under control. “Bad move, sweetheart. You admit to me that you’re all about to die. Unless we help, of course.”

Tania’s hesitation gave him his answer, and Russell pounced.

“Now I have you over the barrel,” he said. “God, the visual that gives me.”

He pretended to daydream for a few seconds, and Tania could only watch.

“Sorry,” Russell said, “I was in another place there for a second. Air and water, eh? Tell you what, love, I will trade you … oh, let’s see … twenty standard shipments, for the return of the farm platforms.” He folded his arms in satisfaction, leaned into the camera, and smiled.

She held his gaze for a few seconds, aware of the stunned silence coming from Zane and Tim. “Two. We just need two shipments.”

“But I need all the bloody farm platforms, and not dropped on my head this time, please. Twenty shipments in exchange is my very generous offer.”

There were nineteen farm platforms, and they represented the Belém colony’s only leverage against Darwin. To give them up, she knew, would either make Belém dependent on Darwin or force the abandonment of the colony’s other two space stations. Neither scenario could be allowed.

Tania exhaled, slowly, through her nose. “Nine shipments, for nine platforms.”

“Deal,” he said, without hesitation.

Zane stood, red-faced. She’d never seen him angry before. “Hold please,” she said, and tapped the corresponding icon on the screen. When Russell’s face vanished behind a red overlay, she met Zane’s eyes. “What?”

“What the hell are you doing?” he barked.

“Buying us time.”

“You’re giving away our leverage!”

“Less than half of it,” Tania said. “They’ll still need us. We’ll probably get fewer people now, but considering the quality of the first two shipments, I don’t think a deluge of spies and vagrants is what we need right now.”

Zane grimaced. “We should have discussed this first.”

If Skyler had been in the room, Tania expected he would chuckle at that. “Everything’s a discussion now,” he’d said to her in frustration a few days ago.

Tania gathered herself. “If the two of you are going to sit off camera every time we have to deal with Darwin, I’m going to take that as permission to act on our behalf.” The words tumbled out before she could think to soften them.

Tim stopped leaning against the wall. His hands went to his sides and he glanced at Zane, then back. “Come on, Tania, it’s not like that. You’re just … the face of things.”

“Just a pretty face?”

“I didn’t mean that, you know I didn’t. Er, that didn’t come out right. Pretty, obviously, but … can I start over?”

“Tania,” Zane said, “you put too much burden on yourself. This … Camp Exodus, Melville Station, all the farms, this was Neil’s plan. We all followed it, we all knew the risks and knew what we were leaving behind. You don’t have to redeem yourself.”

“There’s plenty of people here who didn’t ask to come.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Zane said, “but no one has yet requested to go back to Darwin with the food shipments, despite the blanket approval to do so.”

Tania checked herself. Anger had risen so quickly she’d failed to recognize it, and had let it sneak out. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Zane cleared his throat. “Still, you make a good point. Major decisions should be put to a vote, as a general rule. That being said, sometimes it’s better to show decisive strength. Neil knew this.”

“He was the master at it,” Tania pointed out.

“And you may be right,” Zane went on, nodding. “We’re overburdened dealing with all these farms. Picking and packaging the food, the logistics of shipping ninety-five percent of it to Darwin. We have as many people working on that as they’re sending us, so what’s the point?”

“My thoughts, exactly,” Tania said.

Tim cleared his throat. His cheeks were still red from his earlier flub. “Nine shipments of air and water will last us months, a big chunk of the two-year plan. And half the remaining platforms will still be enough to feed us all, many times over, for years after that. I say we proceed.”

Zane took a breath, then nodded.

Tania tapped the hold icon again, and made her deal with the devil.
Darwin, Australia

29.APR.2283

RUSSELL BLACKFIELD PROWLED across the rooftop, back and forth, barely able to contain his glee.

“I should call Alex first,” he said to himself. Gloating would feel so good.

Ten minutes earlier, before Tania came begging, he’d been slumped over his desk, beset by problem after bloody problem. A strike across the bay at the water plants. Confusion and lack of cooperation from the remaining space stations. Scavenger crews refusing to fly. Whispers of more rioting from the hungry mouths of Darwin. Rumors of the missing farm platforms sparking turf wars among the rooftop garden communes. From his vantage point high above Nightcliff’s yard, Russell could see a handful of smoke plumes rising off the skyscrapers that surrounded his fortress.

It all came back to food. And I’ve just solved that. “Thank me later!” he shouted at the city below him. “Ungrateful sods!”

All he wanted to do was get back to orbit, away from this miserable mess. The farms would come back soon. Not all, but enough to placate the miserable masses. He’d be the hero again and could focus on the most important issue: wrapping his hands around that gorgeous woman’s Indian neck and—

“Mr. Blackfield?”

Russell spun at the voice. Kip Osmak stood in the doorway that led downstairs to the office, stringy gray hair framing his skeletal face. He might be, Russell mused, the ugliest secretary in the history of mankind.

“You’re supposed to bow,” Russell said.

“I … what—”

“I’m joking, you moron.”

Kip nodded. “Sir.”

After a few seconds of silence, Russell spread his hands. “Well? The f*ck do you want?”

“Mr. Grillo is here to see you,” Kip said flatly.

“What the hell does he want? Is he at the gate?”

Kip stepped aside.

Grillo stood in the stairwell behind him. He stepped forward onto the roof, gingerly, as if afraid to get his shoes dirty.

The slumlord stood well short of two meters tall, his stature so slight that Russell thought he could pick him up with one hand. He wore narrow glasses low on his nose, and kept his black hair slick and combed back. A neat gray suit covered his thin frame, over a black turtleneck sweater. Russell had no idea how the man didn’t faint from the heat. How this slim and prim man built an empire of thugs and pushers across Darwin’s eastern quarter was an even bigger mystery.

“Greetings,” Russell said.

“Your grace,” Grillo said, with a respectful if sarcastic bow.

“Very funny,” Russell said. “Kip, shut the door behind you.”

Once the secretary clicked the door closed, Grillo stepped farther out, avoiding the puddles, until he reached the roof’s edge. He looked over the press of buildings beyond Nightcliff’s wall, ignoring Russell’s gaze.

They’d spoken by comm, briefly, after the fiasco in Africa. Russell had made a point not to apologize for the loss of aircraft, many of which Grillo had provided. The last thing he wanted was to admit any debt to the man. Instead he’d given him a scavenger list.

“Fantastic view,” Grillo muttered.

“I’ve got a busy day and a climber ride at six. Are you here to deliver the tracking device personally?”

“Your request has top priority,” Grillo said. “Scavenger resources are somewhat limited. We will find a working sample soon.”

Just ask me to apologize, man. Left unsaid was the fact that the independent crews, working out of the old airport, refused to cooperate with Russell after the immunes’ hangar had been searched and looted. He desperately wanted to take a few truckloads of regulars over there and clean house, if only he had some pilots to take their places. “Well,” Russell said. “What then?”

Grillo studied the city for a moment longer. “No fires to the east,” he said.

The comment surprised Russell. He glanced in that direction, and then studied the rest of the horizon. Sure enough, all of the buildings showing evidence of violence were south, and west.

East, Grillo’s territory, looked the very picture of business as usual. Russell struggled to see the point. “You run a tight ship, I’ll give you that.”

Grillo replied with a thin smile. Smug son of a bitch.

“Are you here for an apology?” Russell asked.

The short man cocked an eyebrow at that.

“Fine. I’m sorry,” Russell said. “I apologize for your aircraft lost during our chase of the traitor, Tania—”

“Apology unnecessary,” Grillo said, waving a hand as if the air held a stench. “That endeavor was worth its risks. And, no, that’s not why I’m here.”

The measured way he spoke unnerved Russell. “Why, then?”

“I’d like to show you something,” Grillo said. “Perhaps you could spare a few hours.”

“Show me what?”

“A solution,” the man said with total sincerity.

Russell’s assumption that Grillo had flown to Nightcliff proved wrong. The man had walked, through the Maze, with just two bodyguards. His turf, after all.

So Russell commandeered an idle water hauler from Nightcliff’s yard, and in less than half an hour they were airborne, heading east.

The cramped cabin had not been made for casual passengers, and Russell found himself sitting in a foldout hot seat across from Grillo. Their bodyguards filled the four remaining spots, save for the cockpit, where a bitter Platz company pilot guided the aircraft over Rancid Creek, then the Maze, toward the old football stadium where Grillo ran his scavenger crews. The pilot’s daughter had made the mistake of shacking up with one of Nightcliff’s workers, and thus became the perfect motivator to keep her father from striking like the rest of the Platz workers across the bay. The girl would remain confined to her lover’s quarters until the storm passed. “Anything other than total enthusiasm from you,” Russell told the pilot a month earlier, “and I’ll start visiting the little whore myself.”

He’d been a model of reliability ever since.

Grillo stared out the open side of the cabin, watching his territory drift by below. The wind swirling into the cabin failed to ruffle even one hair on the slickster’s head. His expression held no hint of the ruthless overlord everyone claimed him to be. No, Russell thought, he looked upon the crumbling buildings like a concerned father.

Not just concerned, he decided. Proud.

“Solution to what?” Russell shouted over the roar of wind.

Grillo took a few seconds before removing his attention from the ground below. He fixed his gaze on Russell and leaned in. “Riots. Disease. Hunger. Warring neighborhoods. Unruly, ungrateful citizens who ultimately only care about one thing.”

“Saving their own asses?”

“No,” Grillo said with sadness. “Whom to blame for their misfortune.”

Russell’s mouth snapped shut with a click.

“We no longer live in a world where Neil Platz can shoulder the burden of scapegoat.”

The aircraft banked, circled, and began to descend.

“Scapegoat,” Russell said. “I suppose that’s my job now?”

Grillo tilted his head to one side and back, so that he could study Russell through his narrow glasses. “The line between scapegoat and savior is a thin one, Mr. Blackfield.”

Whatever you’ve got to show me, Russell thought, it better be f*cking incredible after this sermon. “Wise words,” he said.

The aircraft set down in the center of the playing field. The vast space that once held green grass and painted boundaries had long ago been stripped down to bare concrete. Makeshift houses and tents covered the stands where roaring fans once cheered. Despite their ramshackle materials, Russell couldn’t help but notice the orderly layout. Laundry hung from wires between the gaps, and wisps of smoke rose through ductwork chimneys.

Only two other aircraft were parked on the improvised airfield. Seven had been destroyed in Africa thanks to Tania’s lie. Russell knew the loss had depleted Grillo’s fleet, yet somehow the sight of two lonely planes made the impact a tangible thing.

A fleet of trucks and vans waited for them, parked in a perfect line at the edge of the landing zone. Men and women in plainclothes sat on the bumpers or atop the roofs, weapons resting across their knees or strapped across their chest. They watched as Russell and the others stepped down from the idling aircraft.

Through some silent order, the foot soldiers sprang into action. Drivers jumped into their seats, sparking up their electronics to warm the vehicle’s ultracaps. Others moved to stand in the truck’s empty beds, leaning over the driver’s cabs, rifles at the ready.

Russell couldn’t help but harbor some envy. If only his men reacted with such efficiency at the simple flick of a hand.

Grillo led them to a nondescript truck near the center of the line. If the vehicle held any special feature—armor plating, or some hidden weapon—Russell couldn’t see it. The crime boss might have chosen it at random, for all Russell knew. It fit his personality, at least.

“Old McMillan’s, in Coconut Grove,” Grillo said to the driver.

With only a second to spare, Russell managed to find a handhold. The truck’s motors whined as it surged forward, spearheading the group as the others fell in behind.

The driver took them out a huge gate at the far end of the field, and in less than a minute the line of vehicles snaked through the slums Grillo owned. Men, women, and children alike came out to watch the caravan roll by. Their complacent faces filled the windows above the narrow streets, too.

Russell kept quiet. Coconut Grove was near Nightcliff. Why Grillo hadn’t gone straight there from the fortress confused him, until he realized the obvious difference: Grillo didn’t have a small army with him when he met Russell at Nightcliff.

Yet he could have lined all these vehicles up outside the fortress gate. Rolling through the Maze, Russell thought he understood. Grillo wanted him to see this. Calm streets, faces filled not with fear or dismay but with quiet respect.

In Coconut Grove, a portion of Darwin that butted against Nightcliff’s southern edge, the buildings were much taller. Offices and luxury apartments before the disease came, the once-gleaming structures were called home by many multinational aerospace and tech companies that had flocked to Darwin during the heyday of the space elevator. Some had been abandoned before completion, their upper floors just framing and scaffolds. These made the best gardens, with potted plants and trees stretching all the way up the open grid of steel beams.

One, Russell saw, had a few spot fires burning near the lowest floors of the garden.

If Russell’s intelligence was up to date, Grillo had little sway in this area. Barreling down the center of the street, at the tip of a fleet of vehicles carrying armed civilians, Russell didn’t need any more hints to guess the purpose of Grillo’s theatrics.

He played along, regardless. “What are we doing here?”

“Attempting to impress you,” Grillo said.

Russell grinned, despite himself. “I’ve been to orbit. Fought in orbit, shagged in orbit. Saw the Builders’ turd of a spacecraft.”

“There’s fondness in your voice,” Grillo said. “I’ve heard you spend most of your time up there now.”

True enough, Russell thought. He shrugged.

“Hold your judgment,” Grillo added. He leaned around the truck’s cab and spoke to the driver again. “Proceed,” he simply said.

Russell heard a noise above. He glanced up, fighting the noon sun, and saw two aircraft swooping in over the skyscrapers. They were in formation, side by side. As Russell watched, one banked and separated while the other matched the same direction the ground vehicles were on.

The truck slowed and turned. Russell glanced down in time to see other vehicles in the line surge forward on either side. They approached the same building the aircraft had and surrounded it.

Grillo’s people leapt from the backs of their vehicles before they even stopped. They took down two lackwit guards at the barricaded entrance and swarmed inside before the bodies even hit the ground.

Russell took a quick glance backward, expecting to see the remaining portion of Grillo’s force moving in behind. His eyebrows shot up when he saw the truth: They were moving on a building across the street, using the same tactics.

Grillo hadn’t budged. He stood firm, on the bed of the truck, both hands resting on top of the cab. Five minutes passed, marked by sporadic gunfire from within the building. The aircraft above circled the two buildings. Twice Russell thought he heard machine-gun fire from them, but they were too high up for him to be sure.

“I would have gone in with them,” Russell said, hoping to sound casual.

Grillo frowned. “We all have our specialties. Yours is fighting.”

“What’s yours?”

“I make friends.”

Russell snorted a laugh. He doubted many residents in these buildings would be friendly now.

Grillo turned and stepped lightly from the back of the truck bed. His bodyguards stayed behind. Russell followed, ordering his two men to wait in the truck as well. He fell in next to Grillo, expecting they would enter one of the buildings. Instead Grillo moved with calm confidence to the center of the street, placed his hands behind his back, and waited. Unsure what to do, Russell stood next to him. He shifted from foot to foot, feeling exposed in the middle of the wide avenue, out in the squalor and anarchy of Darwin.

“In hindsight,” Grillo said, “I should have had you wear a disguise of some sort. Your presence adds some complexity.”

“Give me a gun and I’ll go inside where the action is.”

“The real action is out here, Mr. Blackfield. Ah, as you now will see.”

A group of Grillo’s people came out of the building to their right. They prodded an Asian man ahead. Three other prisoners were shuffled off to the side and held there. All four of the captives shared the same bewildered expression.

The man, an elder, was ushered toward the center of the street. His eyes grew even wider when he recognized Russell.

Before anyone could speak, another group came out from the building to the left. Two burly men were led forward. One held a hand to his forehead, and Russell could see a trickle of blood coming down his wrist and forearm.

These two scowled when they saw Russell, and their expressions turned to raw hatred when they saw the Asian man held across from them.

Grillo moved to stand between the two parties. He held out a hand toward each, motioning downward, willing them to be calm.

“You are Shane Killen and Ben Paston,” the crime lord said to the two men on his left. “You claim ownership and control of the building called Phoenix, and its inhabitants.”

“Who the hell are you?” one asked in a thick New Zealander accent.

“I go by Grillo in most circles,” the short man said.

The two men exchanged a glance, faces flushed. Their eyes both darted to Russell, then back.

Grillo ignored them for the moment and turned to the Asian on his right. He spoke to the man in accented Chinese. The man’s anger melted away as Grillo spoke. “May I continue in English?” Grillo asked, and received a nod.

The fighting had stopped, and a strange serenity fell over the wide street. Russell saw faces in the shadows, people gathering in the alleyways, watching.

“If you’re going to kill us, get it over with,” the one called Shane Killen said.

“On the contrary, Mr. Killen, I’m here to hire you.”

The word tripped everyone present, including Russell.

Shane’s eyes narrowed as he recovered his composure. “Meaning what?”

“I’ve a job for you,” Grillo said. “For all of you. It’s a simple one, one you’re already extremely good at: growing food.”

“We do this already,” the Chinese man said.

“Not lately. Not enough,” Grillo said. Russell marveled at how he kept his voice calm, even when calling someone a liar. “You see, gentlemen, rumors have spread like SUBS through this city of a problem with the farms above. Such chatter has brought panic to certain districts—”

Except yours, Russell added mentally.

“—and has led to a situation humanity cannot afford right now. You fight each other. You fend off the poor who live on these streets, forcing them to fight among themselves. The problem cascades across the entire city. Worst of all, you hoard your food even as you burn the other’s.”

The Chinese man cast his eyes down to the cracked pavement, shamed. The two Kiwis remained steadfast, if not defiant.

“Unity is required,” Grillo said in a new tone of unmistakable authority, without raising his voice.

“You want us to work with him?” Shane said.

“No,” Grillo said. “You’re going to work for Darwin. You’re going to set aside your petty squabbles, your outdated sense of ownership and entitlement. You’re going to grow food, more of it than you thought possible, and you’re going to share it.”

“Or what?”

Grillo tilted his head, the same way he had with Russell when they stood atop Nightcliff. “Or nothing,” he said. “I’ll leave you to your vertical kingdom, and devote all of my energy, resources, and friends to the buildings that surround yours.”

Another group came out of the Phoenix building. Shane and Ben both turned to watch as a gaggle of women and children were ushered outside.

“Ah,” Grillo said. “Your wives and families. I’ve invited them to visit my home over in Lyons.” With a simple gesture, Grillo’s people prodded the terrified group toward a pair of waiting vans.

Shane stepped toward Grillo. “You lay a damn finger on them—”

“Please,” the slumlord said. “They’re to be my guests until our new business arrangement is fully up and running.”

For a span of ten seconds Shane stared down Grillo, his nostrils flaring. His partner, Ben, reached out and gripped the man on his shoulder. “Give us a minute, Grillo,” he said.

They stepped away and began a quiet, animated chat.

“All right,” Russell said. “I’m impressed. But this is two buildings out of a thousand.”

“Dominoes,” Grillo said.

“Even you don’t have enough people to enforce such deals across the city.”

Grillo offered a quizzical look. “No? Mr. Li, how many people reside in your commune?”

The Chinese man had been watching his own family, who still stood near the entrance of his building. “Four thousand.”

“A similar count across the street, I’d guess.” Grillo looked at Russell with total sincerity. “You see? I’ve just added eight thousand people to my sphere of influence, and it’s not even lunchtime.”

Russell bristled. “Li, give us a moment,” he said. When the man moved out of earshot, Russell stepped close to Grillo, using his height advantage to full effect. “I’m not going to let you take over my city.”

Grillo shook his head. “Let’s not pretend you exercise any authority out here. You’ve left these people to their own devices for years.” He raised a hand to quell Russell’s objection. “Who can blame you? You have enough problems to deal with.”

“Get to the damn point, Grillo.”

“Under centralized, coordinated leadership, this city can flourish. I can make that happen, with your … blessing.”

“Or without, it seems.”

Grillo shook his head. “You still don’t understand.”

“Stop talking like a Platz, then, and get to the point.”

The man nodded. “Under the flag of Nightcliff, I can bring order and prosperity to this city. They will sing our names.”

“Or?”

“Or,” Grillo said, “I could fan a shit storm beyond anything you can imagine.”

Russell clenched his fists.

“Raise a hand against me,” Grillo said, “and no less than six snipers will compete to put the first bullet through your brain.”

“I don’t like being threatened,” Russell growled.

“No one does. This is an excellent deal for you, Blackfield. I’m offering to take over the headache this city gives you and allow you to focus on bigger issues.”

“And all I have to do is, what, turn a blind eye to your conquest of the roofers?”

“A bit more than that,” Grillo said. “Without your explicit mandate, this won’t work.”

“Mandate.”

“Make me your prefect of Nightcliff, with full confidence to do whatever is required to bring the city under control. I’ll give you regular reports, and you’ll still have full authority, while being able to spend your time in orbit, settling matters there.”

The words percolated through Russell’s mind. He craved a healthy gulp of vodka.

“Six months,” Grillo said. “If you give me that, I’ll give you Darwin on a silver platter.”

“Starting when?”

Grillo extended a hand. “About an hour ago.”