Hurley's Heroes Collection 2015-2020, page 39
The bakkie door slammed behind her. Khos came up behind Nyx and wrapped an arm around her and put the pistol to her head, yelled up at the guards. “You want to see me kill them right here? Open the fucking gate or you’ll have two bodies out here!”
That did it.
The gate opened, and they went through.
Khos held Nyx firmly against him; he was a hot, solid presence, and the stink of him was heady and not unpleasant, like an earthy whisky barrel. She wanted to fuck him again, which she was sure he knew. But then, it was natural to want to fuck somebody you worked with all the time. She’d wanted to fuck everyone on her team at one state of drunkenness or another. And flirting with death was the best drunk of all.
Taite, Anneke, and Rhys got out of the bakkie. Khos moved away from Nyx, and she turned back and gave Rhys a little salute.
Then they all scattered.
The explosion was impressive, even by Nyx’s standards. She had packed the bakkie with explosives from a cache set out fifty kilometers away by an old acquaintance of hers, one she would owe big some other time. As it went up, Nyx dove into the ditch along the side of the road, crawling as fast as she could, hunkered low to the ground to avoid any lingering toxic gas from the first circle of the data lake’s defenses.
The bodies from the trunk would mingle with the mess from the bakkie and the leavings from the explosives them- selves, creating a morass of shit for these people to wade through for days, let alone the hour or so Nyx needed to fish the fucking data lake.
She met up with Rhys and Taite, just ahead of her, both crawling and coughing as the force of the blast pushed the toxic gas back their way. Nyx caught the hint of lavender in the air, and shuddered. “Stay low,” she said.
Anneke and Khos would double back and meet them on the other side of the data lake, using the distraction of the explosion to cut through the fence and wait for them in a second getaway vehicle. Nyx was really glad she’d gotten half her fee up front, because expenses on this job were piling up. Dusk turned quickly to full night. Rhys led the way, intu-
iting it with bugs or some shit.
“The swarms,” Rhys said, after a long period of silence, and Nyx chanced a gaze up at the tall, willowy structures ahead of them.
“Trees?” Taite said.
“Those aren’t trees,” Nyx said.
They were buzzing swarms of flesh beetles, all organized into massive, clawlike shapes. They made a whispery sound, all their bodies moving and clacking over one another.
“Single file after me,” Rhys whispered.
They crawled after him, Taite in the middle and Nyx coming up last.
“What about hornets?” she called.
“Those are out, too,” Rhys said. “I’m trying to warn them off. The explosion has confused them. The effect may wear off soon, though.
“Ah!” Rhys said. “What is it?” “Stuck,” he said.
It was nearly pitch black. The light they did have came from far behind them, in the still-burning car. Emergency vehicles had arrived, and there were at least half a dozen boots on the ground. They didn’t have much time before the distraction became a real problem.
Nyx moved ahead. The ground here was getting muddy. She felt down the edge of Rhys’s leg and unhooked his trousers from a jutting bit of metal.
“There you go,” Nyx said.
“Great, ah—” and Nyx thought Rhys swore, but that couldn’t be right.
He tumbled past her, sliding down the bank ahead of them. Nyx grabbed him, yanking him to a halt. The end of his burnous tumbled ahead of him, sinking into a muddy morass of water.
“Lake!” Rhys said, and pulled his burnous out. It hadn’t melted, but it was certainly destressed.
Clouds rolled over the sky, giving them glimpses of the moons, which shed a brief glimmer of light over the broad, flat plane of the data lake. It was a soupy mess, like vomit, not a lake, but Nyx supposed that “data vomit” didn’t sound as nice when you were marketing your trash service.
“I’m going to act as lookout,” Nyx said, “up above the bank. They’re going to get their shit together and send out a party to look here for us soon. We’ve got ten minutes. Do your shit and then let’s get out of here.”
“Ten minutes my ass,” Taite grumbled once Nyx was out of earshot, but Rhys wasn’t so sure they even had ten.
“Do it, deploy it,” Rhys said. He stayed away from the swarms, most still moving in scattershot patterns around them.
Taite shrugged off his pack and pulled out a complex web of data beetles in perfect casings that they had custom made after their dip in the garbage chute. Rhys understood the principals behind it, as it was tailored to speak to the other types of casings that shared the same organic chemistry.
Rhys watched Taite toss it out into the lake like a net. It sank into the slurry. Taite kept hold of one end; soft blue lights flickered up the filaments as little bits of organic code sparked connections.
“Hey, hold this for a minute,” Taite said, and before Rhys could reply, Taite put it into his hand and was scrambling further down the bank.
“What are you doing?” Rhys hissed. “We have five min- utes!”
“That was metal back there!” Taite said. “There’s some chips down here. All sorts of stuff ends up here. Just a little bonus. Hold on. It’s two minutes!”
Behind them, the swinging arc of patrol lights cut through the darkness. Rhys ducked, instinctively.
“Hey hey!” Nyx called down at them. “Hurry up!”
Rhys peered at the net. He wasn’t sure when it was done. He was just going to have to yank it out and they would run out with what they had.
“Rhys!”
“We’re coming, Nyx, for—”
A swarm. He felt it, suddenly upon them, and he cried out, too late, “Taite!”
Taite screamed. If the search party wasn’t out for them before, it was headed their way now.
Rhys dropped the data net and ran to Taite, sending out spidery commands to the swarm to disperse. It buzzed angrily at him. He stood over Taite as Taite’s body jerked and shuddered. Rhys spread out both hands, focusing all of his energy on the swarm, compelling it to move on, to fracture, to break. It pushed toward him, the buzzing louder now, more menacing.
“Break,” he murmured, “break.”
The swarm thrummed, and he felt the shift in their path as they swarmed past him and over him, headed back to the site of the explosions.
Rhys grabbed Taite and hauled him up. Taite jerked forward, tongue lolling. “Help me, Taite,” Rhys said. “Try.” Rhys heaved Taite back up the bank, scrambling to the top where Nyx waited, half crouched, partially outlined by the still-roaring explosion. He wondered, again, what sort of accelerant she had used.
“You’re just in time,” Nyx said. “Can see the patrol lights coming.” Her gaze swept the pair of them.
“He’s paralyzed,” Rhys said. “Take him.”
Nyx didn’t move. “Where the fuck is the data?” she said. “I left it,” Rhys said. “I knew we were out of time. Let’s go.
The patrol.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Nyx said. “You left the data? You should have brought me the goddamn data and then gone back for him, you lazy, cowardly fuck.”
“I’m cowardly? No,” Rhys said. He could see the lights coming, fast: flame flies. “If you’re so brave, you go back for them. I’m not risking another—”
She pushed past him, knocking him so hard he dropped Taite and tumbled onto the sand after him. “Curse you, Nyx!” Rhys spat.
“Already fucked!” Nyx called over her shoulder, and disap- peared over the dune.
Nyx slid down the bank and ran to the edge of the acid sea. The lights of the data net blinked at her as they continued to drift down, down . . . Rhys had just let the whole fucking thing go, just dropped it. All this catshit, and he had dropped it. For what?
She ran, and kept running, because in her head she heard him, again, and heard herself, calling him a coward. Fuck it.
Nyx ran into the acid sea and grabbed the netting into her arms and hauled it back out. The slap of the acid was sharp, a burn that seared the skin of her legs and arms; little droplets wet her face, making burn marks, no doubt, and she slogged back up onto the bank with the net and the little casings that had adhered to the ones in the net. She bundled them up even as she rubbed soil onto her burning arms and legs. The lights of the patrol were closer. She broke from the edge of the lake and ran for the other side of the compound where they were due to meet Anneke and Khos.
She saw Rhys already ahead of her, dragging Taite with him. Taite had already regained some function, as he was moving his legs, slogging beside Rhys. Nyx tripped, bang- ing back onto the bank. She tasted blood. She’d bitten her tongue.
The patrol was right over the dune. She stayed down, not daring to reveal herself when they were nearly on top of her. She raised her head only as they passed, just in time to see their light illuminate Rhys and Taite getting into the bakkie.
The bakkie juiced up and peeled away from the broken fence just as the patrol arrived; Taite nearly fell out. They hadn’t even had time to close the door.
The patrol ran back past her, heading for their vehicles. Nyx pressed her face to the ground, clutching the data net. Her skin was peeling off, and there were swarms of flesh beetles out here, big enough to make giant trees, and this is where she was going to end up, fucking dead beside a data lake for no fucking reason. Why did she die? somebody might ask, if anybody bothered to ask or anybody knew or cared, and they’d say, Who the fuck knows? She needed some rent money.
Nyx rolled over and gazed up at the sky. Clouds had moved back over the moons, cutting off the stars, too, so all she saw was blackness. Like looking inside of herself, a constant loop.
Sound of tires on sand. A heavy bakkie hurtling her way. A shout, “Nyx! Get the fuck in!”
Nyx scrambled up, snatched the data net, and bolted for the hole in the fence. On the other side, the bakkie was swinging around again. Anneke drove, and Khos was in the front passenger seat, arm outstretched, reaching for her.
She grabbed his hand, and he pulled her in.
They peeled away from the fence a second time and blazed off into the darkness, no headlights on, burning off toward the bumpy road they had mapped out for their escape. Nyx tossed the data net onto the floor at her feet and looked out the back, keeping an eye on their pursuers, whose vehicles still hadn’t managed to get around the wreckage near the gate.
She caught Rhys’s eye; he sat in the back, wrapped in his burnous. When he saw her looking at him, he closed his eyes and pretended to sleep.
They drove hard for an hour without pursuit before An- neke eased up on the juice.
“You hurt?” Anneke asked. Nyx was in the front, squeezed between her and Khos.
“I’ll need a witch.”
“Sure thing,” Anneke said. She never took her eyes off the road.
The bakkie rolled up outside of a little town called Ikraam, or that’s what Rhys said it was called on the map. Anneke found the hedge witch, and got the witch to come to the little abandoned adobe shack at the edge of town where they were squatting.
Khos slept out in the bakkie. He had rolled it away from the road, parked it behind some rock formations, and thrown sand on it for good measure.
Nyx preferred him out there because she found him deeply distracting. The hedge witch sat with her outside the shack in the wee hours before dawn, mumbling over her wounds as she applied a sticky salve crawling with tiny worms that Nyx didn’t want to know the name of. The hedge witch was Hedian, and spoke in an accent that Nyx couldn’t parse, but her legs were feeling better. What she did understand was the hedge witch setting down a bottle of whisky in front of her and rubbing her thumb and fingers together. Extra, for the whisky. Nyx was happy to pay that, and tucked the bottle up between her feet.
Anneke and Taite were passed out inside the ruin; Nyx heard Anneke’s snores. Rhys stood a few paces away, arms folded, staring at the blush blue on the eastern horizon. As the first of the suns crested the horizon, he rolled out his prayer rug. Nyx thought it was a little early for morning prayer, but who was she to judge?
She paid the hedge witch, who totted off down the road, muttering things in Hedian that could be blessings or curses. Nyx figured she deserved a bit of both.
She sat on a petrified log, leftover from some ancient forest long dead here in the desert, and watched Rhys pray.
When he was done, the first blue sun had cleared the horizon, and it turned the whole world eerie and dreamlike. This was her favorite part of the day.
Rhys caught her look and said, “Respite on the crossroads to Jannah? I know you’ve already chosen your path, but there are days I think I still have a chance to take a new direction.”
She snorted. “Paradise is a pretty story, but just a story.” “One nice thing I say, after all that, and you just spout cynical brimstone and fire.”
“There’s no paradise,” Nyx said. “No Jannah. No hell, either, before you get started on that shit, getting all mouthy with me. Just this. This.” She tapped the petrified log beside her. “We make of it what we will.”
“And this is what you’ve chosen to make of it,” Rhys said, nodding at the ruined adobe. “You chose this tired little place, your ravaged body, your loose morals, your drunkenness. You chose to be alone, adrift, damned. This is the hell you made yourself. I’d ask what you have to punish yourself for, but I’ve already seen enough in my time with you to justify every bit of this.”
“What about you?” Nyx said. She was tired, and not in the mood for his preaching. Maybe he had gotten his second wind; she wished for a first. “You’re not living in any paradise. Not one from the fucking Kitab, anyway. Maybe it’s different in Chenja, eh?”
“Jannah is for believers,” Rhys said. “We make it there by dedicating our lives to the worship of God. This is my hell, yes. It’s the trial I must get through to Jannah. I reach many crossroads, and at each one, I must choose the path to Jannah.” “Well,” Nyx said, showing her teeth. “That’s something we have in common, then, isn’t it? We’re both living in our own little hell.”
He shook his head. “I’m glad you’re not dead, too,” he said, and left her alone on the log. He passed into the ruined hut, into darkness.
Nyx turned her face toward the horizon again, because it was the easier view, the beautiful view that she could understand. The air was still blissfully cool. The first sunrise had turned the horizon a fiery blue, and the second was making a violet line there where the desert touched the sky. She closed her eyes and felt the wind-borne sand caress her face. The smell of saffron rode in over the wind, faint, just a breath of it, like the scent of an old lover still lingering on one’s clothes. She yanked off the top of the whisky bottle with her teeth and spit out the cork. It skittered across the ground, leaving a wispy trail in the sand. The impression it left there put her in mind of a snake, and that made her hungry, so she drank instead because that was easier right now. She choked on the bitter fire in her throat and squeezed her eyes shut against the brightening sky. Her skin still tingled, sloughing off dead and dying layers. She was alive, alive, alive today; she was never so alive as the morning after cheating death.
She opened her eyes. The sunrise was very beautiful.
GARDA
DEAD YOUNG MEN kept washing up on the crooked sandbar that abutted the black ruins of the palace on the pier. The body lying now at the feet of Inspector Abijah Olivia was positioned facedown in the sharp black glass of the beach. Abijah wore heavy boots to protect her from the sand, but the body was not so lucky. Barefoot and mostly naked, thousands of tiny lacerations peppered its sal- low grayish skin. Tattered remnants of black and gray clothing still clung to the body in places, giving the impression that the corpse was an old, ancient fish that had fought throughout its ascent into the air, then was abandoned here in the ruin of some net. The lower half of the corpse lay at an awkward angle, as if the torso and legs had been twisted in opposite directions. Clumps of black hair still clung to the head, but Abijah noted two chunks of scalp missing just above the neck, as if he had been yanked by the hair so hard that it had come free. The great hooked-beak birds patrolling the coast could have done that after the body washed up, she supposed, hoping to snag the long hair for their nests. More answers would come from the medical examiner.
“Sorry catch, you are,” Abijah muttered, squatting next to the body. She poked at the left wrist with a stylus, pulling up a necklace of pink kelp to reveal a work tattoo. Like the other dead men she had seen on this sandbar, this young man appeared to have been employed at the wight factory upriver, which was run by the last of the operations that accepted off-world labor. Being off-world would account for the body’s tall, slender frame and weak bones. The twist to the lower body could have just as easily happened postmor- tem, when the corpse hit the water. If he’d already been a corpse, at that point. One of the previous young men had actually drowned; the others had been dead hours before meeting the salty water.
The crunching of boots across the volcanic glass alerted Abijah to the arrival of what was most likely the garda assigned to the case. Abijah turned to see the woman duck beneath the webbing that secured the scene. She fixed Abijah with a wintry look. Abijah knew the stout little woman, all hips and ass, who shoveled toward the body like a rugby forward prop ready to hit the opposition at pace.
“You’re not assigned to this case,” Garda Katya Sobrija said. Be- hind her, the yellow lights of the garda ambulatory unit blinked muzzily through the mist. This far south, the sun never really set; this moody, yellow-ochre dusk was as dark as the island would ever get.
Abijah offered up her wrist, and a blooming insignia and the relevant signatures misted up from the interface written into her skin. “Not doing it for the garda,” Abijah said. “Private contract.”
