Chapter 11 CLEO #2
Hunter’s quiet for a long moment, and I wish I could see his face. Eventually he speaks. ‘You know how I said they don’t know I made it to Pax?’ He lets out a slow breath. ‘They also don’t know I made it to Orbital. They don’t know I’m here at all. I bribed my way onto a freighter.’
I bang my head on the roof of the tube when I try to do a double take. ‘Wait, they think you’re on Earth? She didn’t notice that you’d gone silent for four months? What about your sister?’
‘We don’t talk,’ he replies, in what’s trying so hard to be a neutral tone, but comes out grim. ‘Lucky, really. She’d have told my mother immediately, and getting yelled at with transmissions on a twenty-minute time delay, both ways, would have been an ordeal.’
‘Still, Hunter, you can’t seriously—’
‘Oh, I hear how it sounds,’ he agrees. ‘But this was my only option. I’ve spent the last few years quietly running my father’s arms of the business – they didn’t interest him.
I was going to use all that work to prove to my mother that I deserve a place in the Graves family business.
But I pissed off a lot of people, forcing my way onto those boards, into those meetings.
So the minute Dad was gone, his executive officers shoved me aside and erased the fact that I’d ever been there. ’
‘So showing up unannounced is about, what, taking some of that power back?’
‘Being a Graves is about legacy. We’ve changed the world for the better, and I’m going to be a part of all the changes to come.
But now everything I did to show I’m ready to step up is gone.
What’s left is to force a confrontation with my mother.
To talk her through everything I’ve been doing and make her see what I’m capable of.
To convince her to let me in. My sister’s been at her side all this time, setting herself up as the only rightful heir.
I have to roll the dice, if I want what’s mine. ’
Marguerite Graves. I’ve heard her name. I’ve seen her quotes in the news, if not her picture. She’s always seemed like she’d punch you in the face, then charge you for her time.
I wonder if she looks like her brother.
I need to change the subject from the Graves legacy before I ask him whose world, exactly, they’ve changed for the better. The one thing I can’t do is argue with him outright.
‘Soooo,’ I say slowly, squinching one eye open, as if I can see his face while I take this risk. ‘You lied your way up here, huh. Makes you a kind of hitcher, doesn’t it?’
Hunter laughs abruptly, a surprised sound, and his hand finds my ankle to give it a squeeze. ‘Damn, you make a good point. I swear, as soon as I can find someone in authority, I’ll hand myself in. So what’s your story? You said before that you were here alone. Are your family coming later?’
I should have seen that question coming. But I’m still caught up in the tangle of his father’s death, and Hunter’s ambitions, and the fact that his mother is as terrible as mine – and he surprises me into answering with the truth.
‘I don’t have any family. I lost my dad too, actually.’ My fingers are still gripping the grate, holding it in place where I took the screws out, and my whole hand’s starting to clench and ache.
Now it’s Hunter’s turn. ‘Oh, shit, Cleo, I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have let me go on about—’
‘Don’t be,’ I mutter. ‘It was years ago. There were a lot of medical bills left behind afterwards. We lost everything, and we still owed money. And after that … well, maybe you’ll get it. Your mother doesn’t sound like a treat, if you don’t mind me saying so. No contact for five years is a lot.’
‘That’s fair. I’m guessing yours isn’t up for Mom of the Year either?’
‘She’d probably pawn the trophy.’ I snort. ‘Mine lumped me with all the medical debt, since I was a minor. She figured they’d cancel it, instead of going after a teenager. Which was incorrect, by the way. And then she split. I haven’t seen her since. I heard she went to Georgia, but who knows.’
Hunter’s voice is incredulous. ‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘Which bit are you having trouble believing? That they’d chase me for the debt before I hit eighteen, that my mother split, or that she went to Georgia? They really cleaned it up after the whole thing with the reactor. I heard it’s pretty safe these days.’
‘Uh, take your pick, I guess,’ he manages.
‘Look, not to sound …’ Like I think you’re a sheltered rich boy.
‘That’s how life goes, where I come from,’ I say quietly.
‘Nobody I grew up with would be surprised by that story. It taught me a lot about not relying on other people. I figured the debt collectors wouldn’t track me off-world, so I got my apprenticeship—’
‘Engineering, right,’ he agrees, probably wondering how I afforded any of the education I’d need for that, if I grew up somewhere that taught me the kinds of lessons I’ve learned. Which is a fair question, because I couldn’t afford it.
‘Yeah, engineering. And I came here. Only to find myself hiding out in a ventilation shaft with my new friend Hunter Graves, missing the good old days of debt collectors threatening to smash in my knees. What a weird day.’
My mind obligingly flashes on the breathless desperation of running down an alleyway, the debt collectors’ footsteps – Sabrina’s footsteps – pounding behind me.
Every moment of that was because of this boy and his family, I remind myself.
Hunter sighs, and I think the thunk I hear is his head hitting the floor of the pipe we’re stuffed inside. ‘What was it like here?’ he asks, slightly muffled. ‘Before the whole life-threatening-danger situation?’
I watch the water through the grille of the duct cover I’m holding in place. It’s still flowing steadily, spilling down the sides of the cabinets in small waterfalls and rippling out until it hits the far wall. (I know, you’re curious. Not long now, with any luck.)
I’m trying to think about what kind of answer works best for the person I’m supposed to be right now – what would make sense for an apprentice engineer to say.
What might make him sympathetic, although – and the knowledge hits me in the gut again – he won’t be helping me anytime soon, once he figures out I’m a hitcher.
But weirdly, mostly what I want to do is tell him the truth, even though that’s a bad idea.
‘It hasn’t been what I hoped,’ I say eventually, when I realize I’ve taken too long to reply.
‘I’m not sure it was a good idea to come, even if I was in danger back home.
I thought I was on my own there – I sure felt like I was – but at least I knew people.
Here, I’ve been really alone, these last few months. And I don’t know what to do next.’
His hand tightens on my ankle again, and I wish I could feel the warmth of it through my suit. ‘Cleo, if we get out of this—’
‘When we get out of this,’ I correct him.
‘Of course, when we get out of this,’ he repeats obediently.
‘Glad to hear you’re accepting some leadership, rich boy.’ I can hear myself joking, hear myself teasing him, but there’s this huge gulf between us, and he doesn’t even know it’s there.
‘When we get out of this,’ he forges on. ‘You can write your own ticket to the GravesUP compound, or anywhere we’re connected to. I’ll help you find any position you want. And if you want to go back to Earth, I’ll have the debts taken care of and find you a ride.’
A strange, detached shock flows through me, like a weird kind of grief. This is exactly what I wanted. If you’d told me yesterday that I’d get this offer, I’d have done backflips. But now I know he won’t give it to me, not really.
Maybe if I can get to Graves before he finds out who I really am, I’ll have a chance of hiding there – but something tells me they’ll be a lot more efficient than the UN at sniffing out hitchers.
I’m searching for words when the alarm kicks in below.
A red light starts to flash near the door, and a low, mournful whoop echoes around the classroom.
The ventilation shaft vibrates with the noise, but I have to keep hold of the grille, so I can’t block my ears.
The noise ricochets around my head, and I can feel it in my temples, my jaw.
Hopefully an alarm’s going off on the bridge as well, and in a minute we’ll have the company we’ve been waiting for. Honestly, the water should have set off an alarm ages ago; it must be over ankle-deep down there. Pax, you desperately need more funding.
Hunter and I both go quiet, and I shift my grip on the grate cover again. I can’t drop it too soon – this is going to be all about timing. Thankfully, it only takes a minute before the door opens, and I get my first close-up look at another of the mercenaries.
This isn’t the Martian, or Sabrina. This is the woman we first saw on the bridge, unpacking the guns.
She has black hair with blue streaks dyed all through it, pulled back in a braid that hangs halfway down her back.
She’s probably a spacer – her skin is that kind of almost translucent white that says it’s never seen the sun, and when her eyes dart around the room, I catch blue sparks in them that are probably vision augments of some kind.
As soon as Blue Braid opens the door, water starts to flood out through it. Cursing, she hustles inside and pulls the door shut after her, rather than let the water flow out into the hallway. So far, so good – we were hoping she’d be smart enough to do that.
To all our relief, she flips up the cover on the alarm button by the door and smacks it to silence the whooping siren. Then she sloshes over to the sinks and shuts off the water, before turning to take in the classroom. ‘What in the seven hells were these kids doing?’ she mutters to herself.
I loosen my grip on the grate – my hand’s so tense from curling into a claw that for a moment I think I won’t be able to straighten my fingers. But the cover drops into the water, and Blue Braid whips around at the splash.
Then I grab for the coil of wire, and begin to unspool it, letting the first wires slither down toward the water.
We both agreed we had to at least give her a chance to see what was about to happen.
Hopefully it’ll look like the construction crew left the wires coiled on top of the duct, because build crews everywhere are slackers, and everything’s harder in a suit, so you’re looking for shortcuts.
And now the humidity or something – she won’t have time to think – has caused the vent cover to pop out, and bad things are about to happen.
Good news: she’s not stupid. She takes one look at the wires spooling down toward the floor, spits a curse, and jumps up onto a desk, no doubt hoping that whatever it’s made of doesn’t conduct electricity.
The second she’s up there I drop the wires, and they spark as they make contact with the water.
Then everything goes quiet. Blue Braid knows what’s up, though.
She knows the water around the base of her desk is electrified now, conducting whatever current was in the wires that fell.
She stays right where she is, easing down to sit on the desk like she’s planning a long stay.
I start scooting back along the pipe, resisting the urge to cackle with glee. Good luck to them, figuring how to get her out.
If Blue Braid’s friends open the door, electrified water will come pouring out. They’ll have to figure out how to shut off the power to the whole section, and that should take them a minute.
Meanwhile, Hunter and I will see how many others we can isolate before they get her free. If we can rattle them, whittle them down, maybe we really can force one into starting a rover for us.
Hunter must be moving backward behind me, but for a big guy, he’s silent. I press my hands to the floor of the pipe and gently slide myself backward again, toward the junction where we can escape.
Below, Blue Braid’s voice rings out, and I freeze.
‘Leader, this is six. I’m in the classroom, checking on that humidifier alarm. Listen, the whole room’s flooded, and the water’s electrified.’
There’s a moment’s silence, and I can only imagine the questions the Pirate is firing at her down the line. What did you say? Probably followed closely by How are you alive? Am I speaking to a ghost right now?
‘I’m standing on a desk. It’s nonconductive. Look, that’s not what’s important.’
Another pause. I’m guessing: You don’t think being trapped by a tiny electrified lake is important? How are we supposed to get you out of there?
‘Listen, I’d appreciate it if someone figured that out, but we have bigger issues. The wires that hit the water came down out of the ventilation shaft. And I only had a moment to look, but I’m absolutely sure I saw movement up there.’
Fear sweeps through me in a wave. I’m frozen in place, and behind me I hear the softest intake of breath from Hunter. Neither of us moves. Shit, those blue sparks in her eyes were vision augments.
‘I can’t shoot,’ Blue Braid says. ‘I don’t know what that vent’s made of. I don’t want anything ricocheting back on me. Not while I’m stuck on this damn desk. But you might want to figure out where this vent ends up, because whatever the evac logs said, I don’t think we’re alone here.’
My body’s locked in place, my muscles aching from clenching so hard.
This isn’t fight or flight – this is the other option they forget to tell you about, freeze.
It’s like I’m trapped inside myself, screaming that I need to move, I need to run, but I don’t know how.
I can’t even make my little finger move.
Then Hunter’s hand closes gently around my ankle one more time, and it’s like I can feel the warmth of his skin through my suit – like it races up my leg, and somehow thaws me.
I begin to move again, shuffling back slowly and quietly – I don’t want to give her a sound that will confirm what she already believes.
But in my mind, I’m ten steps ahead, my old instincts pushing up from below the surface.
It’s time to do what I always end up doing.
It’s time to run.