Journeys End In Lovers Meeting
Lusa killed the engine and Kerr relaxed her grip. She hoped Lusa hadn’t noticed how tightly she’d held on. They may be able to take one or two, but if they ran into more than that, they’d be fucked. She doubted Lusa knew what the Styx did to people. Death and torture didn’t even begin to cover it.
Kerr pulled the helmet off and smoothed her hair back. Only a few strands fell loose. “That lotion trick really works.” She smiled, hoping to cover her nerves.
The bank did not look like the ones downtown. It would have fit in right beside the sex shop they had left. The sagging flat-top asphalt roof, its eaves covered in an absolutely stunning amount of seagull excrement. Several birds perched on the edge, eyeing them, offended by their presence.
Lusa’s plush lips turned into a thin white line.
“It’s okay, the door has always been broken.” Kerr ducked through the shattered glass, disappearing into the bank. Lusa followed.
Blankets of mushrooms grew from plaster walls. Kerr noticed Lusa staring. “Banks never used Hexaline,” she explained. “Too many points of entry to secure.” Opti adjusting for the low light conditions. , she made her way into the black void behind the teller’s desks. Lusa followed.
The high-traffic carpet had mostly rotted away, exposing warped cellulose flooring. “Is this safe?” Lusa took a cautious step. The floor sagged wetly, but didn’t collapse.
“There are metal beams underneath.” Kerr stood at the edge of a concrete stairwell. “I made it across just fine.”
“You’re at least 20 kilos lighter than me.” Lusa stepped cautiously.
“Not there.” Kerr pointed at a spot just ahead of Lusa’s foot. “The beam is to the right.”
Feet hovering above spots on the floor, waiting for Kerr’s instructions, Lusa did not appear pleased. But the spots Kerr pointed out held.
“I can see more with my Opti.” Kerr tapped the side of her temple. She didn’t dare divulge just how much she had seen last night, but she would remember it for as long as she lived. Kerr hopped down the stairs before Lusa could see her turning red.
Smelling of wet earth, age and lack of maintenance had bowed the concrete walls in slightly and weeping cracks had started to form. In one corner stood a small generator, along with a rusted metal breaker box and an access hatch.
“That’s the way into the tunnels I was talking about.” Kerr pointed to the hatch. “And that,” Kerr pointed to an immense circular door on the other side of the room, “is the vault.”
“It’s closed,” Lusa said, unhelpfully.
Kerr worried at her lip. “It could have been shut by anyone. I haven’t been here in years.” Kerr wanted to be hopeful. If Chalice and Pinga were on the other side of the vault, they would starve, if they didn’t kill each other first.
“Isn’t there a way to release the door from the inside?” Lusa asked.
“No.” Kerr knocked twice on the vault door, and waited. Relieved at the lack of an answer, Kerr continued. “Shutting the vault and trapping whoever was trying to rob them inside was a security feature.”
“What happened if an employee got trapped inside?”
Kerr laughed. Lusa frowned. “SD didn’t have a single human employee working here. The only thing stored here was gold, old paper and posh watches. Emptied out before they sealed off The Glacier.”
Lusa reddened, embarrassed. “What about the big tower downtown?”
“All humans. Corpo shite like how much Chem you could pump into your workers before they became a liability” Kerr leaned against the door.
Corporations always got her riled. “Fierce cunts, the lot of ‘em, right? Pure human creativity needed to come up with the sort of cruelty they did. AI didn’t have it.”
Lusa looked disappointed. “I saw some ads playing in Model 2’s lobby. Was Tyton ever like that?”
“What did you see?” Kerr relaxed, sliding down the slab of dull grey tungsten.
“Clean buildings. Cars speeding down roads. People having fun in the streets.” The wistfulness in Lusa’s voice was hard to ignore. She’d also inadvertently confirmed that the Adlets were no longer in Tyton. No wonder no-one could find them.
Kerr cleared her throat, guessing. “Don’t you have ads in your city?”
Lusa shook her head, but didn’t say more. For once, she looked jolted. She must have realised that she’d let a secret slip.
Kerr decided not to press it. “If people could speed down empty roads or party in the streets without fear of getting shot, they wouldn’t buy products that gave them the idea that it was possible, yeah?”
“That makes sense,” Lusa muttered. Kerr felt a growing sadness at her disillusionment.
She shouldn’t care what Lusa thought of Tyton – it was an objectively terrible place.
She would be leaving, hopefully with Pinga and without killing them all to go somewhere better.
There was so much she wanted to know about her and so little time left.
But Lusa had moved on. “What about this?” She pointed to the generator next to the access hatch.
“It powers the door.” Kerr rapped her knuckles twice against the vault once more to check.
Still no answer. “When we first investigated this place as a potential safehouse, we found that the latches were loaded with some kind of mechanism inside the door itself. Our Optis can’t penetrate it, no matter what frequency we use.
If we close it, it’ll lock automatically, no power needed. ”
“But you need power to unlock it?” Lusa guessed.
“Yes, but there’s more,” Kerr continued. “We got the generator going, yeah? But it requires an encryption key from Model 2 to disengage the lock. It’s why we never set up here.”
“So, either Pinga and Chalice locked themselves in there hiding from the Styx, or someone else did years ago?”
Head bobbing, Kerr knew that Chalice would only have dragged Pinga in there if they were being chased and had no other options. Her mind spun with scenarios that would have led them here before Lusa’s voice interrupted.
“Can I ask you something?”
Kerr looked up at her. Lusa’s deep brown eyes held on to her with an intense sincerity. Kerr was too awestruck to answer.
Lusa asked anyway. “I know why I’m doing this – I need Pinga. Why are you doing this? You could let Chalice drown in her own mistakes, go back to the rest of the Chargers and be their new leader.”
Kerr stared at the wall. She wasn’t doing this for Chalice. If she was being honest, she hated Chalice. Working together out of necessity hadn’t smoothed over her faults nor Kerr’s feelings.
And lead? No. Kerr was no leader. They might listen to her for a few weeks, but she had no doubt Cinder or someone else would rally a group to take charge. Kerr didn’t have the political drive for that.
Yeah, she made it to the Junkpile in record time, but she’d never been so addicted to ChemTec that she’d lost everything. Figured out how to repair tech out of necessity. Lived in the tunnels because she couldn’t afford electricity.
Someone else had made sure she had work that didn’t require ChemTec abuse. Someone else had taught her how to fix things. She didn’t even live in the tunnels. She was a hanger-on. She walked paths someone else had blazed. She wasn’t ashamed, but she knew her strengths.
“I’m no leader,” Kerr finally managed to say after her thoughts had run their course. “Our rules say that Chalice has a week to show up before they declare her post abandoned.”
“And then?”
Kerr’s shoulders shrugged against the vault. “Someone else will stand. If they have enough supporters.”
“What happens if they don’t have enough supporters?” Lusa leaned against the generator.
Bracing a foot on the vault, Kerr sighed. “A few people die. If we’re lucky, the rest fall in line before there’s too many of them. If we’re really lucky, they decide to keep everyone else out of it and fight one-on-one, but I’ve never seen that happen.”
“And if you’re unlucky?” Lusa asked.
“You get factions. They undermine you. Kill a few key people. It drags on for years. The Harpies went through that a while back. They lost a lot of turf to the Styx because of it.”
“And Chalice?”
“She had a lot of good ideas that most people liked. It wasn’t until recently that the Styx started making threats again and she came up with this absurd plan.
Honestly?” Kerr stood up and rolled her shoulders.
“Things have been shite lately. I expect someone will make a move soon. With or without Chalice.”
“Okay, but,” Lusa’s eyes darted around the room, avoiding Kerr. “Even if you don’t want to lead, why are you running around with me trying to find Chalice?” The real question was left unsaid, but it was clear.
And Kerr knew it was a legitimate question.
Why run around in unclaimed territory with few escape routes and fewer friends?
Why not let Chalice reap her own folly? The years of cheating?
The years of gaslighting? And after they’d broken up, the low simmering of resentment.
Kerr had wanted to move on. Perform some low-level job where she could disappear and forget about her, but Chalice couldn’t let anything go.
She insisted Kerr stay in her orbit, under her thumb.
Why, she couldn’t understand. Kerr had done nothing to her except finally end the relationship.
Maybe that’s why she wasn’t leadership material. She didn’t have that drive to possess more than she had. To make other people suffer.
But Kerr knew this wasn’t about leadership. It wasn’t even about Chalice. The unspoken truth that both of them refused to voice was that Kerr was doing this because Lusa wanted Pinga back. And Kerr wanted Lusa to get what she wanted. And buried under that, Kerr wanted Lusa to want her.
Admitting her attraction wasn’t a problem, that was undeniable at this point. She was capable of turning off her brain and having sex with her enemy.
The problem was that she wasn’t turning off her brain. She didn’t hate Lusa. At least, not as much as Lusa hated her, even if she was nice to her.
Flexing ceramic composite fingers, the loss of her arm should have stoked her anger, but it only felt like the price of entry.
She needed something else to hang on to because if she allowed herself to pretend they weren’t enemies, she would have to face the implication – Lusa would be gone in a few days and she’d be taking a piece of Kerr with her, whether she realised it or not.
Kerr blew out her cheeks. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said, finally. Dealing with unrequited feelings wasn’t what she needed right now. Kerr walked past Lusa and headed back up the stairs, pushing those inconvenient thoughts back down. “Come on. They must be in the tunnels, right?”
“And if they’re not?” Lusa called after her.
Kerr didn’t turn around. “We’d better hope we can convince Model 2 to unlock this door.”