SILVER: Acheron (A River of Pain) (The SILVER Series) (9 page)

Still sitting on the bed where Silver left her, Alice looks like she hasn’t moved all day.

“You said you’d be back before dark.”

Silver refuses to be guilted. “I tried.”

Alice eyes the bag with suspicion. “Where did you get all this?”

She creeps closer, wide-eyed, as Silver spills out the loot all over the bed. There’s a six month supply of toothpaste and soap, clean clothes—Silver’s own—and underwear. Three toothbrushes, a hairbrush, some socks … and then the real stuff: Two bottles of vodka, some ammunition for her HK USP and a whole stash of food—some of which is already in Alice’s mouth.

Silver tosses some of the clothes at her. “Here, you can wear these.”

“Yours?” Alice guesses.

“I had a fortuitous encounter with an old friend today,” Silver smiles, the scent of Luka’s cologne, trapped eternally in the fabric of the hold-all, triggering an instant swell of fond memories. “He’s going to help us out.”

How true that statement is, Silver has no idea. For all she knows, she may never see him again. Or, if she does, it might be her arms deal he busts in on. Speaking of which, Silver thinks back to the scene of their earlier meeting, in the old school building.

If the Fringers had even the slightest heads up that the Police Division was about to burst in on the proceedings, they may have had a chance to stash some of their merchandise.

First thing in the morning, Silver vows, she’ll go back. For now, though, she suppresses a yawn and summons the last of her strength to brush her teeth before bed.

Mmm, minty.

Intangible Specific

By the time dawn breaks, Silver’s been awake for three hours. The reclaimed bed is far from comfortable. Springs poke out here and there, and the whole thing ripples with tremors each time Alice adjusts her position.

Until this, she hadn’t shared any bed but Alex’s in many years. So familiar was their routine, she never needed an alarm to wake her in the morning. Instead, she was used to being gently coaxed into wakefulness by his wandering hands.

Her body aches.

Routine blown all to hell, she can lie here no longer. Managing to slip away without being noticed, Silver leaves Alice a note scribbled on a piece of toilet paper.

Help yourself to food.

Much of the Fringe District still sleeping, Silver makes her way back to the raided school building with the empty hold-all slung casually over her shoulder. For once, insomnia has brought her some good fortune—she’s the first one here.

Picking through the wreckage of useless Old World junk, she digs around for any place where items of value could have been stashed. At first, she tries to track footprints in the dust, but it soon becomes impossible to tell hers apart from the Police Division, and those from the Fringers. One print lies on top of another and some seem to be going in all directions at once.

Frustrated, and about to give up, the rising sun offers her a clue. As a beam pours in through a broken pane of glass, it casts light over something glistening on the floor.

A sliver of metal.

Aha!

Beneath the stage there’s a storage area, recently meddled with. Silver kicks the broken hinge aside and gives the cupboard door a swift shove inward.

Thunk.

It hits the floor in a shower of dust and Silver reaches in behind it, fumbling blindly. At first, her fingers find nothing more than a desiccated old rat skeleton.

Eww.

Then … cold, hard metal.

The barrel of a Striker 12 shotgun.

Jackpot.

Behind that, a bag full of grenades.

Hauling them out from their hiding place, amidst all the scraping and the rattling, she doesn’t hear the footsteps. In fact, she remains completely oblivious to her company until the gun is pressed up against the back of her head.

A PP-2000, she guesses, judging by the feel of the barrel.

“Don’t move,” a gruff, unfamiliar voice barks at her.

“Or else what?” Silver rises slowly to her feet, despite the warning. “You’re going to shoot me?”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll bet that goes against your orders, though,” she guesses, still holding onto the bag of grenades.

“My orders are to bring you in alive, that’s all. Didn’t say anything about you being unharmed.”

“Ooh, so cliché.” Silver twists the bag around her hand. “So what’s the plan? Rough me up and then turn me in? Put me in my place and make me beg a little?”

“Something like that.”

“What is this, your first month on the job?”

“Second.”

“Ahh,” Silver smiles. “I’ll forgive you, then.”

“For what?”

“Your naivety.”

With that, she swings around to face the Agent who dares to make the mistake of thinking an ex-Division Fringer could be such an easy catch.

Thwack!

He learns his lesson when the bag of grenades meets his face, and he’s knocked to the floor. Out cold, he’s in no position to stop Silver from shoving the grenades and the Striker 12 into her hold-all and robbing him blind. She takes his weapons, his ammo, and—just for good measure—his cigarettes.

She makes it as far as the fire exit doorway before she hears the shot ring out, and the world turns black.

*************************

Peppermint toothpaste.

Blood.

Irritation.

All of the things Silver can taste in her mouth as she regains consciousness, handcuffed to a chair on the rooftop of an old Fringe District clock tower.

In front of her, her assailant—the man who shot her in the back with a tranquilizer dart.

Police Division.          

Agent Sterling Carter.

Silver doesn’t know him, but she hates him already.

Her eyes adjusting to the daylight, she realizes they’re not alone. On the edge of the roof Maydevine is silhouetted against the sun’s glare, speaking in hushed tones to another figure, obscured by Maydevine’s wide shoulders and looming stature.

“You could have just said ‘please’,” Silver rasps, drawing Maydevine’s attention.

Her throat is dry and she spits dust, her face aching from the fall she took against the concrete floor when Carter shot her down.

Maydevine snatches up a chair from his end of the roof and drags it over to her, setting it down straight in front of her, interrogation style. “Would you have listened?”

Silver doesn’t answer that, far more concerned with identifying the third figure still hovering in the background.

Luka.

Her chest tightens and she senses conspiracy. “How did you find me?”

“The more important question is: why do you insist on avoiding me?”

“I’m not really having the best time right now. Call me in about thirty years and I’ll pencil you in for lunch.” She looks past Maydevine and yells at Luka. “Hey, jackass, better start flexing that wrist, cuz mine are handcuffed, thanks to you.”

Luka steps up, now deeply conflicted. He’d picked Silver’s limp body up from the floor after Carter shot her. He’d carried her to the car and laid her body down across the backseat, cradling her head in his lap for the short drive to Maydevine.

Everything had seemed okay, until then. Suddenly, he felt like a traitor, breaking their bond of trust.

“I had no choice, El.”

“What did you do? Put a chemical tracer in the cupcake?”

Silver watches him closely, catching the briefest flicker of his eyes over to the hold-all and then back down at his feet.

She rolls her eyes. “The fucking bag, obviously. You’re such a jerk. I can’t believe I trusted you.”

“It wasn’t intentional, honestly.”

Silver is about to refute that, but Maydevine doesn’t give her the chance.

“He broke into my house,” he cuts in. “I caught him in your old room, rummaging through your clothes.” He lets that thought sink in while he lights up a cigarette. “He really didn’t have a choice, kid.”

“There’s always a choice.”

“Not when your job’s on the line,” Luka mumbles.

“Don’t talk shit,” Silver barks at him. “Maydevine can’t fire you; he’s not your boss.”

Maydevine digs his old school Division badge out of his pocket and tosses it into Silver’s lap.

Commissioner.

Police Division.

“Effective this morning,” he explains.

Silver’s heart plummets into her stomach.

She wants to cry. “I don’t understand …”

“Police Division has authority over the Fringe District. I did what needed to be done.”

“You quit?”

“I transferred.”

“What’s the difference?”

“You need me here.”

“Only if you’re here to kill me.”

Silence.

Maydevine puffs away on the cigarette, wishing there was a magic cure for his daughter’s belligerent, don’t-care-if-I-die attitude malfunction.

“I can offer you employment.”

Silver snorts. “What, are you gonna be my Handler now? Is that why Luka’s here? He’s gonna be the first in line?”

“Would you stop?” Luka’s hands finally come out of his pockets, two w-t-f palms upturned to the sky. “Why are you being like this?”

“I don’t need your help,” Silver spits back at him.

“Really? So I can have all my shit back, then?”

Of course, Silver has nothing to say to that. She likes the fact that she has clean underwear and deodorant, and … pickles. He gave her pickles, of all things. She hates pickles, but pickles remind her of coming home from the Academy to find Maydevine munching on pickles in the kitchen, preparing her dinner.