Dark Space: Avilon (15 page)

“It’s not you . . . but you
should
go.”

“Not me?”

She stopped walking and looked at him very seriously. “You’re wearing Celestial Whites and your eyes are glowing with ARCs. Down here a pair of those are worth more than most people make in a month—and that’s
if
they have a job.”

Ethan turned in a slow circle. He found the pair of ruffians he’d spotted earlier glancing at him again. They were standing a few feet closer to him than they had been before. When they saw him staring back, they looked away and whispered something between them.

Ethan’s eyes narrowed, and he walked up to them. “Hey,” he said.

One of the boys was tall and skinny. The other shorter, but barrel-chested under his dark gray robes. Ethan decided that Barrel Chest was the one to talk to. “You two have a problem with me?” he asked, stopping to stand uncomfortably close to the young man.

Barrel Chest looked up and smiled with a mouth full of missing teeth. “You’re a long way from home, old man.”

“And?”

The boy shrugged. “And nothin’ just don’t stay long, that’s all.”

“So what if I do? What are you going to do about it?” Ethan gave the boy a shove. He bounced into the man behind him, who quickly shrank away. Barrel Chest recovered quickly, and shot Ethan another hateful look.

Ethan replied with a nasty grin. “There, see, that’s the look you were giving me earlier. You should mind your own business before you lose any more teeth.”

Barrel Chest took a swing. Ethan ducked and came in with a right cross. The boy took it in the ear and stumbled to one side. He cursed and looked up, his dark eyes flashing.

By now people were giving them a wide berth, clearing a space. Some had stopped to watch, while others were moving on more quickly than before.

The boy let out a roar and charged. Ethan blocked two blows headed for his face on his forearms and took a quick step forward to grab the kid’s head in both hands and force it down. Simultaneously he brought his knee up. Barrel Chest’s nose crunched and he screamed. The boy crumpled to the ground, his nose streaming blood.

“Anyone else?” Ethan asked, turning in a quick circle to look for new challengers. No one would meet his gaze. He affected a smug grin to mask the revulsion he felt at the beating he’d given.

“Put your hands behind your back,” a soft voice said.

Then came a girlish scream, and Ethan heard the voice of the woman he’d been talking with before. Another scream, and the mother’s voice became more urgent. “Leave her alone!”

Ethan turned toward the commotion and saw the tall, skinny boy had the little girl in a choke hold. He’d pressed a long, thin knife to her throat.

“I said, put your hands behind your back,” Skinny repeated, nodding to him.

Ethan’s eyebrows floated up. He noted that the rest of the people in the line were all conveniently minding their own business—except for the girl’s mother, who was still pleading with the knife wielder to let her daughter go.

“What do you want?” Ethan asked, wondering where the facility’s security guards were.

“Your clothes. Your ARCs, and all the bytes in your account.”

“
Bytes?” Ethan wondered aloud. “I don’t have any money.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Ethan noticed a glowing white tattoo on the boy’s upper arm. It was a skull. “You think you’re tough, don’t you, boy?”

The kid sneered at him. “Hurry up! I don’t have all day.”

Peripherally, Ethan became aware of Barrel Chest getting up beside him. “If you’re so tough, why don’t you let the girl go and fight me? Keep your blade, I don’t mind a challenge.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not? Afraid I’ll break your nose, too?”

Skinny inched his knife closer to the little girl’s throat. A small bead of blood appeared at the tip. The little girl whimpered, and her mother screamed, sinking to her knees and breaking down in tears.

“Hey!” Ethan said, taking half a step forward. His ire was building swiftly now. “What’s wrong with you? She’s just a kid!”

“So? I used to be one, too,” Skinny said. “Hands behind your back.”

Ethan did as he was told. He received a swift kick behind his knees and sunk to the ground. A second kick hit him in the side of the head. His ear exploded in pain, and he heard a ringing sound. The world began to sway around him, and his vision darkened around the edges.

Skinny let go of the girl and began advancing on him with the knife. “I’m gonna carve you up,” he said.

Ethan freed his hands from their self-imposed bondage. Then Barrel Chest appeared in front of him, his face and nose a horror of smeared and dripping blood. Ethan saw the boot coming toward his own nose just in time to catch it in his hands. The boot was slick with the boy’s blood and it slipped through Ethan’s grasp, hitting him above one eye. His head exploded with pain again, and he felt a wave of nausea wash over him.

Dizzy and sick, Ethan slumped to one side, wincing against the pain radiating from his eye. Skinny reached him with the knife and held it close and glinting in front of his good eye.

“Since you didn’t want to give them to me, I’m gonna cut ‘em out.”

Ethan assumed the boy was referring to his ARCs. He mumbled a vicious curse that he barely heard through the ringing in his ear, but Skinny shook his head.

“You’re the one who’s frekked, old ma—”

There came a loud
whoosh
of air, and Skinny flew backward, as if hit by an invisible hover truck. He slammed into the far wall of the warehouse with a
thud!
Even from a distance, with one ear still ringing, that impact was loud. Ethan pushed himself up, leaning on one elbow to watch as Skinny slid down the wall and flopped onto his face, quiet and unmoving. With his one good eye, Ethan saw the faint splatter of blood and the crack in the wall. The kid was definitely dead.

Strong hands lifted Ethan to his feet. He raised his pounding head to find himself face to face with a Peacekeeper, but not just any Peacekeeper. That man’s glowing blue eyes and young, chiseled features were familiar by now. Ethan tried to smile, but it hurt his eye too much, so he abandoned the attempt.

“Hey there, Wovik,” he managed. “Where’d you come fwom?” Ethan frowned at his lisp. “Fwo . . . Fro-m,” he tried, forcing his tongue and lips to cooperate.

“Omnius ordered me to follow you.”

So someone
had
been opening doors for him. “Why didn’t I see you?” he asked.

“I was cloaked. Come on. We need to leave before you get yourself into any more trouble.”

“Give me a second.” Ethan turned in a dizzy circle to find Barrel Chest, but there was no sign of the other boy. He did find the little girl and her mother, however, sitting on the floor, their groceries forgotten as they hugged and held each other close.

Ethan kneeled down beside the woman and placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea that—”

“Just leave us alone!”

Ethan frowned. “I . . .”

“You’ve done enough! Go back to the Uppers,
Non!
We don’t want you here.”

Ethan felt the Peacekeeper’s hands on him again. Rovik half-carried, half-dragged him through the market.

They reached an exit and Ethan noticed a pair of guards standing there. Ancient-looking sidearms were holstered on their hips. Their armor was scuffed and beaten, and it didn’t glow with active shields like the Peacekeepers’ armor. Even so, they should have been enough to deter a pair of kids with a blade.

“Hey!” Ethan said as they approached the guards. “Didn’t you hear the fight going on?”

One of the guards turned to him with a bland look. Then he appeared to notice what Ethan was wearing, and the fact that he was being escorted by a Peacekeeper. The guard straightened and shook his head. “No, Master! We heard nothing! Was there a problem?”

“Yeah, there was a problem! Someone was holding a little girl hostage with a knife!”

“Is she all right?” the guard asked, sounding appropriately alarmed.

“Yes, no thanks to you!”

“And yourself, My Lord? You don’t look well.”

“I’ll be all right.”

“That is good to hear!”

“Come on,” Rovik whispered sharply in Ethan’s ear, shoving him along again.

“Keep a better lookout in future!” Ethan called over his shoulder.

“We will do our best, My Lord!”

Once they were outside, Ethan shrugged out of Rovik’s grasp and rounded on him. “What the frek is wrong with them?” he asked, gesturing to the guards standing just inside the sliding glass doors of the warehouse.

“They were being polite. Celestials don’t give orders to Nulls, nor do Etherians.”

“So? I don’t have to give them orders! I’m telling them about something that happened on their watch. They should at least go to investigate.”

The Peacekeeper slowly shook his head.

“Why not? It’s their job!”

“They probably knew what was happening, but as soon as they saw who the troublemakers were, they went back to their posts and minded their own business. Based on the shaven eyebrows and tattoos, those two boys are members of the White Skulls. Sutterfold District is their territory, and not even Enforcers will mess with them. Not below level 10, anyway.”

“So you’re telling me the law is afraid to mess with a pair of
kids
that I could have beat bare-handed.”

“They’re not afraid of those two, per se, but of the retribution that might follow if they intervene.”

Ethan snorted. “Okay, so the local authorities are running scared. What about all the drones I saw collecting trash? They don’t look like they’d give a krak about retribution.”

“The drones are not programmed to interfere in local disputes.”

“So Omnius just sits back and watches while criminals run the show down here.”

“That is how the Nulls want to live, so he must respect their wishes.”

“That’s a convenient excuse.”

“It is neither convenient, nor is it an excuse. If the Null Zone were less corrupt and decrepit, Omnius wouldn’t need to send millions of his drones to work in the trash fields for free, and the Nulls would pay for recycled products. Besides, if the drones started interfering, they’d become targets for organized crime, and soon Omnius would have to send a whole army down here to clean things up. The Null Zone would become a military dictatorship, run by Omnius, and that would cause more of an outcry than a few murdered Nulls.”

“Omnius runs the recycling operation?”

Rovik inclined his head. “He can’t leave it to Nulls. The job would never get done. Now, enough arguing. Please follow me. There is a reason Omnius allowed you to come down here.”

Ethan scowled, but he decided to follow Rovik in silence. They walked down a broad corridor leading from the supermarket. Here the ceiling was three or four stories high, which Ethan thought to be a waste, but then he noticed the overly-tall doors lining the corridor, and he remembered the mechanized load lifters he’d seen earlier.

After walking for about a minute, they came to a bank of lift tubes, these ones with regular, human-sized doors. The nearest one chimed and opened for them as they approached, as if Rovik had summoned it from a distance.

They walked inside, and the lift started upward with a barely-perceptible jolt of movement. Ethan’s ears popped, and the lift opened, revealing another rooftop.

Smack.
The rotting garbage smell was back. They walked out, and Ethan noticed that now they were much further from the trash fields with their glowing accelerator tubes. The noisy bustle of machines compacting and cutting trash had been reduced to a distant rumble.

Looking up, Ethan saw towering rows of apartment buildings stretching all the way out to the distant, hazy line of the horizon. The apartments were aglow with lights, and each one was painted a different color—blue, red, green, purple, yellow . . . It was an assault on his eyes.

Elevated streets ran along in front of the buildings, connecting them to each other and providing easy access for pedestrians rather than cars.

On the far side of the residential complex, the side closest to the garbage dump, Ethan saw a high wall with glittering rows of spikes on top.

“What is this place?” Ethan asked.

“This is where the people you saw in the market live.”

Ethan began nodding. “Subsidized housing?”

“Free.”

“Who pays for it?”

“Omnius. The trash field used to be twice as large as it is today. Omnius reorganized the space to make room for a housing project. This is where Nulls come when they have no place left to go.”

“I thought he doesn’t care.”

“You’re mistaken. He cares too much, but we tie his hands and stop him from helping us.”

“Why did you bring me here?”

“I didn’t. He did. I suspect he wants you to know what he’s doing, even for people that don’t want his help.”

Ethan frowned, unsure of what to say to that.

“There’s one other thing you need to see before we go.”

“What’s that?”

Not bothering to reply, Rovik walked over to one side of the rooftop. Ethan followed. They came to a long staircase. It descended at least ten stories from their vantage point, all the way down to the highest level of streets running between the apartment buildings. Blue Cape led the way. By the time they reached the street level, Ethan was short of breath and his legs were shaking. He felt nauseated again. “Hey!” he gasped, leaning over a railing to catch his breath.

Rovik turned to him. “Come, Ethan. Your wife is awake and asking for you. She is not happy. I suggest you don’t delay.”

Ethan grimaced and started after the Peacekeeper again, trying to ignore the way the world felt like it was tilted on one end and he was about to slide off. That kick to the side of his head must have upset his sense of balance.

They walked down the street, passing apartment building after apartment building. People’s front decks were lined with glowing green plants and some basic furniture. A few residents sat outside, drinking or smoking something fragrant and sweet. Dark eyes watched him as he hurried by.

A railing ran along the side of the street to his right, and walkways led to people’s homes on his left. Most of the apartments were bright and occupied, but the glass was blurry to preserve people’s privacy. A few of the apartments had holotext signs hanging above their doors and in their windows, describing services that their residents offered—everything from hair cuts to more exotic things that had no place being advertised on a public street.