Salt Row

- 31 -

I reach the apartment again and the thrumming of music is quieter, and it is later at night now, and my head is light, and my mouth is dry. I enter and try to keep my footsteps light. Some part of me is sure beyond doubt that Rhodes will be missing, she'll have found that electric moped or robbed some new kind of transportation in the fifteen minutes I was gone, or she'll be waiting for me with a shotgun pointed at the entrance, but when I come inside she is still there in the bedroom, straightened the bed, made a nest on the floor for me with some of the throw pillows and the comforter. I don't speak and she doesn't speak. Her bleeding shoulder is exposed still, and so I clamber on the bed to patch her up.

Never used this brand of chitin stitches, but used some in the past of similar make. Instructions on the back translated badly to Common. She leans against me for support and I reach over her and gradually meld and remeld and sew together her mangled shoulder-chitin. Two big wounds mainly, two holes in her, some cartilage broken, some veins cut. Lots of disinfectant. "Ow," she murmurs.

"Hold on, it'll get better," I tell her. Applying the topical cream now. Really should numb up soon. Her chitin is frail, weak, like she's been malnourished. Maybe hasn't been eating well lately.

She dips her head against mine. Her ruby eyes dulling and her mandibles crunched against her face in pain. I dip the thin-as-hair needle into one bit of chitin again and sew another line.

Come on, Rhodes. Let me make it better, then you can fuck off like you wanted. I tell her, "Be out after I do this."

"You're leaving?" she asks.

I have to explain myself. I don't like doing that. I gently press into where her shoulder meets her neck, and apply a couple stitches. She winces as I'm doing it. "I feel bad for you," I mutter, "but stupid for trusting you."

Then she blurts some words out just as I'm wrapping up, just as my throat is tight. "I got your letters," she says.

"Yeah?"

"Got 'em, most of them. I-I, ah, missed the first couple, 'cus I wasn't near paper to... to figure out what you were writing. But I got all the rest. Wrote 'em down or figured out how you were moving your arm."

"Okay," I say.

I apply some more stitches. Almost done both front and back now. She's good at holding still, more than most. I did patch up plenty of people back home, all species, all stuff like this. Lots of unexploded ordnance on Stromm's from the War, lots of civillians in the outlands with shrapnel wounds or mangled legs.

Rhodes says, "I do love you back, I think. I like you a lot anyway."

"Stupid idea."

"No, writing wasn't stupid," she whispers.

"Stupid to..." I'm about to say stupid to love me but it feels so rash and brutish and stupid, too, to say something like that. She means it. What does it mean that she means it?

She grips my arm loosely. "And I held onto the stupid, ah, letters, even though... stupid for op-sec, too, to hang onto 'em. I did burn them when the League came over, y-yesterday. But kept them until then. So I could look back."

Briefly I think about Ceder's lover, his Bloom, all those letters, all those words from all these years. My face scrunches up. I retrieve some disinfectant and gauze. The bed is messy with little spats of blood but I can't manage to care. "Why did you leave," I ask, all choked up, not knowing why I'd ask something so stupid.

"You know why," she whispers. "Wanted to go it alone again. Thought it'd be easier. I did it before, ah, to... to someone. That kind of thing. And she forgot about me eventually, got over me."

I admit, "I might've, eventually."

"Glad you didn't, I guess."

"Glad I didn't." Only reason she's not gone with the League is because I'm stupid. Could have been a lapdog. Now she's just a roach in the gutter water.

She doesn't move a muscle as I'm applying disinfectant. Don't know if she's already numb there or if she's just good at it. Gauze, now. Lots of gauze. Got plenty to change it, was thinking she'd change it herself. Am I sticking around? Should I? She doesn't want you to leave. I know that. I guess I know that. Trouble is I haven't decided if I'm gonna.

I want to talk about anything else.

"...So those guys were League?"

Rhodes' register drops a little. Suddenly she sounds just like she did when we first talked under the dock. Plan-maker, craftswoman. "Kinda," she says. "Local hires, I think. Not super well-equipped, and not super trained. But they were all using earpieces." That makes her cackle a little, cackle madly like a night-animal again. "It's fucking crazy, you told me people like that always use headsets and stuff. It's real."

I smile faintly. "Yeah. Predictable."

"They kept using 'em to radio in with... ah, ah... whoever. Up in orbit, maybe, asking what questions to ask me."

"The League did use local hires back home," I muse. "Like that. I mean, shit, they used you, even."

"Yeah. Tshh, I don't have to tell you how they work." She grins. Mandibles down and out and calm.

I wrap the gauze all around, and around, and around. She's thin but not delicate, helps me along a little, has me tighten it further. Eventually it's good and tight and a little sticky. "How important... are you, to them? Grand scale?"

"I guess not crazily," Rhodes concludes, after a moment. "Would have sent smarter guys, better guys, I think. They don't think I'm that good at what I do."

"Do they know about the backdoor?"

She nods. "That's why they used me. But they know if I use it again, they can... shut me down." Wording there seems dire, and she lingers on it.

I pipe up. "Why don't we just remove the backdoor, so they stop caring?"

Then Rhodes looks up at me, and her bright eyes seem so familiar again. "See, shit, that was starting to be my idea, too."

The notion that both of us would come up with the same idea astounds me. Doesn't happen often. I weakly laugh. "Just patch the backdoor and they leave you alone?"

"Maybe. Prolly not." She turns back, and I finally pull away. Medical job is done. Now we're just two women sat on a bed, waiting out a storm. "Problem is I'm still a loose end. And if I let them patch the backdoor, I got no cameras anymore, no police scanner or Peacekeeper watch, I got no... info, you know. Which fucking sucks."

"Makes escaping pretty hard."

"Yeah. Impossible." She sighs.

"You're not a big loose end, though," I say. "Are you?"

"I mean, I got some League secrets, I was part of a conspiracy to kill a diplomat..."

I shrug. "You got proof of much?"

She shakes her head. "Pretty much squat. You can fake that shit anyway, so even if we went to the press or something, it won't really work, I don't think. Then they'd definitely want me super-duper-dead."

I sit up more straightly, and stare off.

The rain is all behind us, scattering on the window. Barren little apartment room. I see the spot where I'm supposed to be sleeping and all I can think is that it's exactly like every little hammock I've used on my own, and all I want in the world is to be able to hold Rhodes in this bed, like nothing happened, like nothing's coming.

Nothing's coming? Just because it doesn't look like anything's coming, or sound like anything's coming...

"What about," I whisper, "we use the backdoor to get out, and then destroy it."

"Fuckin' wish," Rhodes says.

"What wouldn't work?"

She swallows, squinting and looking out. "They have MONITOR cores in Velnias, the whole network of things. In a few seconds after, like, shutting off a camera, or editing a feed, or changing a database, one would pinpoint me, lock me out, and—" Now she taps her head-cybernetic, where half her mind resides. "—counterattack. I'd get my brains fried."

I wince. "Shit." Shut me down, she said.

"It is shit. It makes me mad it's so shit." Her claws dig into the bedsheet below us. "All this shit I can look at but can't touch. All these ways out that leave us defenseless. I-I've just been going through the city living one fucking stupid night at a time and I don't... I didn't..." Her voice breaks. "I didn't even have you there to do it with. Can't get out of my own head."

I don't know how to feel. I don't know how to feel about anything. Months spent pining for this lady and it turns out I was wanted, I was. I wasn't ditched by a callous asshole. Or maybe I was and I'm still a fool. I don't care. New fire in me. New fire from someplace far away. "I know some MONITORs we could turn off for a while," I say.

"Ba, saik..."

"The ones in Baultriel. It's—"

Rhodes cackles again, but it's a sad cackle. "Nelly, you can't go turn off a MONITOR, they're the most guarded fucking things ever."

"Sure, but what if we had a team."

She squints at me. "Okay?"

"The ones in Baultriel are a pain in the ass for the militia there, too. I heard little bits from Ceder. Why shit hasn't moved at all for them, why he's still stuck here in the speakeasy."

"Uh-huh..."

I lean over to get a look at her face. She's considering it. Her eyes aren't elsewhere. Really thinking. "Would disabling just one be enough?"

"Disabling," she says, "is not enough. There's so many in Velnias watching different systems. But if we could subvert it, in person, we'd have a smokescreen for the whole fucking city. Give us as much time as it's turned in our favor. Fucking... even five minutes would be more time than I've ever, ever had with that much power."

"Enough to get us out?"

Her voice is rocketing along, her head bobbing. I can tell she's thinking faster than she can speak. "Yes. Yes, fuck yes, because—in just a—I could make a million little copies of me on cameras going places, going everywhere, every escape route, every shuttle in every starport. I could completely fuck their intelligence and give myself a thousand identities. I-It'd be obvious what we're doing, but..."

"But they can't follow up on them all," I whisper, grinning like a madwoman.

"You fucking get it." She's grinning like a madwoman, too.

Now I'm leaned back, kicking my legs a little, imagining us running. Running for real. Running with direction. "And where do we actually go?"

"Well, there's orbit, I guess," she says, rocking her head. "But I don't got any friends anywhere, and... and I dunno about Stromm's..."

No. My head isn't there at all. I shake my head and wave it off.

"I also got the idea of, ah, maybe... maybe asking Ceder if we could come to Haraad."

And that makes me laugh. "Hey, I was thinking the same thing."

And once again we've had the same idea. Maybe she's even thought about learning Dronhas. This hacker living by the sea in a town with nearly no computers at all. Would she like that? Maybe I would like that.

I lean against her.

-

God and her heartbeat is here, it is still here. It was not a dream.

-

I hold her hand.

"Please," she whispers. "I... want this. But I also need to ask you something."

"Alright."

"Please don't hurt me, like that."

A little shudder passes through me. I nod slowly. "Okay," I say.

Rhodes is weak now, weak all of a sudden, and looks up to me, but also looks at something impossibly far away. "I got to be like this 'cus of people really close to me."

Ceder's little pact with Bloom not to harm one another. Such a simple thing. Would be so simple. I want to cry. "I won't hurt you."

"I won't either," she murmurs.

And I just go quiet from there.

I'm not without fault for hurting her. And she probably hates sitting here with only excuses. Knows that I probably won't trust her again, knows she can't make it up to me. I got reason to leave and I haven't, yet. Not hard to guess why.

I see myself like I am across from myself and half the time I don't know what I am, what I've been all my life. Comes easy to see the worst in people but I've been trying to dodge that instinct with her. To my detriment, I know. But she is still here. In spite of that.

I want to be good to people, Pell. I know that's what you wanted for me. I know it's the last thing you wanted for me. I get a chance and you didn't get one. I won't fuck it up.

I promise.

-

I give her the can of Jetsurp, and we share the candy, and we ride the night out. She patches up the glancing wound in my shoulder while I spend a while watching the news on the datapad I bought. New freeway being planned in Surro. Freight train got stuck in station for a few hours. Gang leader dead at twenty-six. I'm checking for anything about our shootout, anything about the Peacekeepers that got called in, but find no coverage of last night anywhere. After a bit we put on a monster movie called Hsu Park 2 instead. Giant ugly bat-mammals breaking out of some nature reserve and taking revenge on the city. Sometime at midnight we are both too tired to stay awake, and I curl her up in my arms, and I drift off to the sound of muffled techno from the downstairs tenants.

- 32 -

I'm still trying to grab at her when I wake up, quiet and out of breath, but she's not there. Then I panic—but after opening my eyes I see Rhodes, curled up in some pillows on the floor, patched up and shirtless and smiling faintly, gnawing at the last of the sour candies.

"Hey," I say.

She raises up a clawed hand to wave. "Morning, freak." Then she throws a sour gummy at me like she's quickdrawing a throwing knife, and I fail to catch it, and it bounces off my face to the floor.

I have really come to like this woman.

-

Not as poorly equipped as when we were first on the lam, and it's a little exciting, and the air is different, and our plans are pretty set. Few days out of the Undercity to let the heat die down—just in case Ceder was grabbed, or turned, or whatever—and then we'll scout it out bit by bit. I have two hundred Vicks left from the emergency fund in my back pocket, so I go out to an open-air market called J-4 Plaza and buy a new-used duffel bag with some extra leg room, and I get a knicknack vendor to break down the hundred-Vick bills into smaller bits. I get back to the apartment one final time, we name the duffel bag the New Bug Bag, and she clambers in with our scant few supplies.

There's a faint early morning drizzle, and the few humans walking the thin streets can't decide whether to tough it out or use raincoats. It smells like mud and sugar, and there's a lightness in the air. Sun is out but obscured by a thin fog, and not overhead yet.

Rhodes is keeping my unloaded shotgun warm in the New Bug Bag. Wrapped around it like a weird pillow.

Don't feel like scrounging up a new fishing rod, since I like my old one, so we travel to get some food to last the escapade. There's a surplus store near the shore on Seesee Street. Windowless, and housed in the second floor of a nasty-smelling warehouse-turned-apartment, with dingy overhead lights and a half-dozen people scrounging around the endless bins and shelves. It's grey and dusty and smells like rancid sweat. Cheap gear on display, a couple single-shot shotguns, then the usual assortment of satchels and flares and firestarters and whatnot. Cans of food, expensive as always. I get us peaches and gattas and beans and soups and a little camp stove, and end up spending over fifty Vicks on just staying alive. Necessary though, and the extra cans will be useful later.

Finally, and as the rain is starting to dry up for morning sun, I head to a kebab stall right by the seafront and get us both some skewered synth-beef with plenty of malt vinegar drizzled on all sides. Last time I tried to get Rhodes some kebab, I misunderstood, and fucked up, and got shawarma, and I had to wait three months to get another opportunity.

We camp out under one of the docks that's not too rusty. I de-Bag the Bug, give her a kebab, and we eat good for the first time in two days.

-

This is a good spot. Low tide today, and the murky brown sand makes adequate seating. We eat and chat and drink a whole bunch of water, which I hadn't realized how badly I was craving. Between us we've got my gear from the shootout—vest with a bullet in it, plastic mask. Been brainstorming ways of getting rid of it, and we've settled on just stuffing it in someone else's garbage later.

I cack out and watch the waves of the Cestabin come in and out for a little while, and Rhodes joins me, hugged tight against my side.

-

"That's a Gritch glasseye," Rhodes whispers. She's pointing at one of the red-feathered, big-beaked birds skimming the surface out there, not far from a superfreighter's knifelike bow.

"You do bird watching?" I ask.

She chitters. "No. Hah. Just know it from the intranet."

I squint. Unlike the ones on Stromm's this one is native to this planet. So much I don't know still. Its big wings look like they were bloodied and then bleached, and it moves so slowly that it doesn't seem to move, until it lands atop a new wave and lays flat on the water, floating without effort.

"There's a copy protect cracker called Gritch," she says eventually.

I smirk. "Cool. Nerd."

"I'll show you it," Rhodes whispers. "Later. And that album with the flop jewelfish on the front. When we get your UAP back."

I hold her hand tight. "Soon enough."

"Soon enough," she agrees, and we stick there watching the waves for a while.

-

Eventually she speaks again. "Hey," she murmurs. "Earlier, you... we didn't talk about what happened, a-and why the League had me do it. But I can, now."

I nod a little against her. "If you'd like."

"I only got theories, but they're better than last time." She gets closer to me. There's a crane whining further to our left on the shore, pulling some debris from the water.

"Hit me," I say.

"Okay." So Rhodes clears her buggy throat and starts to explain. "They didn't want to tell me why shit was going down, but it was really urgent. They told me if I didn't get him done right there, like, in the hotel, it would be job failed."

"They knew you had the backdoor?"

She hums without certainty. "I think... they knew I was familiar with Greenview systems, but they definitely didn't know the extent of the bug at that point."

I lean over to face her, curiously. "What's the extent?"

"Everything running Berry," she says. "The operating system. Ah, ah, it's like... what your datapad runs on, what your arm runs on, what the cameras run on. If I hook in, I can make it work for me."

"Fits with what I've seen. Sure, so they thought it was just Greenview's problem."

"Yeah. Now they know it's everywhere, but they don't know how it works." She has the unmistakable sound of pride in her voice. "I hope it fucking scares 'em."

I murmur happily. "Hope so, too."

"—Ah, ah, but you asked theories, about Jericho," she says.

Thanks for staying on track, Rhodes. I nod and scrunch up against her a little. "Sure."

"I looked stuff up about him. I'm not, like, good with politics, but he seemed, ahh... anti-League? Or something like that? Plus, there's all the money they got from Greenview in insurance, and then the bribe they got to go... ah... get Pelleratz."

"More complicated," I explain. "Well, maybe not the second part. The League does need money."

"Sure, eheh."

I clear my throat. "I'll give you the lowdown on Jericho Arborist, if you can put up with me talking about state taxes and shit for a little while."

Rhodes giggles softly. "Cool date idea."

"We'll see." I bring my gaze up to the horizon line, to where the Cestabin Sea meets the Kesh Band, where the world seems to end and begin all at once. "You probably know this, but the Magenta Rebellion was all about taxes. Some other stuff came out of it, but that's where it started. I heard for the Palisade it was about export tax, since it was a huge cash cow for the League."

"Yep," she says. "Ah, and income tax on people who aren't local."

"Shit, really?" I smirk. "I've been dodging, then."

"Tshhh. Don't tell Ceder."

"He's gotta be dodging too." I laugh a little. "Okay, okay, but. Taxes. Stromm's taxes."

She nods. "Stromm's taxes."

"The planet's self-sufficient, a little like the Palisade, but mostly just through agriculture. Lots of good land for farming. The League wanted to use it explicitly for that—way smaller population, fewer cities, and theoretically self-sustaining off the local farms. No export tax, so we were encouraged to sell every last bit. And a huge import tax, instated a few decades ago, so we don't import any more than we need."

"Like fifty percent?"

"Two hundred percent," I tell her. "Pay three times the cost of goods, two thirds of it goes to the League. Wild shit. Obviously that was a target of the Rebellion, but it's not that simple." I go take a little swig of water, and now I'm really in a storytelling mode, all excited to explain local politics to her. "Stromm's isn't actually self-sustaining. We get monsoons and flooding, and a few years ago both of those combined to completely fuck our harvests for the year. It could have been a famine if we really were trying to survive on our own." I say we like I lived in the big cities. But it affected me, too—I remember the trouble in surviving that winter cut off from easy supplies. "Instead we imported at the crazy tax rate just to survive, and that put the local government in a hole. Corps like Touchdown Systems bailed them out, but, you know, that came at a cost. Started buying equity, owning the farms themselves, setting up shop."

Rhodes shivers. "Yeah I can see where this is going."

"That's the real target, that's what had people in the Rebellion freaking out. And local politicians were freaking out, too, and they made a plan."

"The New Deal Coalition? The one Jericho Arborist was in?"

"Yep. You must've seen."

She lowers her head in thought. "But he was just one guy."

"Getting to that. Anyway, you probably saw their plan. 'Hey, next time there's a disaster, let's not buy from League planets, let's buy from somewhere else, and skip the tax.' In this case it was the UCC that came knocking. The fucking feds, of all people."

"It kinda makes sense, i-if they've had interest in the planet since forever."

I nod. "And they offered a great rate, too. Way lower rate. I think it ended up being a six percent tax from the planet of Merrol. This was all going on behind closed doors, and it was all legal, but threatened the shit out of League sovereignty."

Rhodes asks, "Did it actually go through?"

"Uh-huh. Couple years ago. Another monsoon, and—" I grit my teeth. "—Some people think there were corps sabotaging the farm arrays, too, trying to catch a piece of the pie. But it didn't work out for 'em either way. Stromm's bought a shitload of food from Merrol at a miniscule tax rate. I remember eating Confederate rations that year."

"Fuck," she murmurs. "League would be pissed. Is that why they... had me go after him?"

"I don't know." I glance off. "Maybe. Thing is, he was supposed to be up for election this year, or, uh... the guy who appointed him. And he's just one small fry. Big conspiracy to kill him seems like overkill."

"Was he gonna lose the election? The, ah, guy of the guy?"

"Dunno. Maybe not. People I knew were pretty back-and-forth on the Coalition. They did save lives, and the UCC food was cheap enough that it didn't put the government in as much trouble."

Rhodes sits with this for a little while, and I sit with her, but I swear I can almost hear her brain whirring along. Maybe the cybernetic chunk of her head has a little fan in it. She speaks in a lower, more thoughtful tone. "...They did want him dead real quick. Maybe they thought he was about to pull something. Maybe the UCC is... here. Velnias."

"Sure," I say.

"So he was, like, a security threat. Selling secrets to the big bad enemy. Or trying to convert people here to his side, to be friendly with the UCC. They were worried he'd disappear after the hotel stay, I think."

I purse my lips. "Would explain all the risk and effort. Needed it done immediately, needed it done plausibly. The Greenview thing was just good cover."

"And Pelleratz...?" she asks.

For that, I already have an answer. There's a pit in my stomach all of a sudden, and I take a deep breath. "Realized she'd make a good scapegoat, as we were talking."

Rhodes glances up at me, pulling away so I can see her pretty eyes. She has a narrow, calm gaze, but her antenna is drooped. "Was she, ah... was it not random, you think?"

"Almost," I mutter. "She was our buoy operator in the outlands. Outlanders are terrorists and scumbags. Believable, I guess, that she would have some insane vendetta against a local diplomat, hack in, kill him, leave no evidence. You didn't leave any clues?"

"Fucking nothing," she says. "I did the job perfect."

"I think the League pointed 'em her way, then, because nobody's gonna miss some terrorist in the swamps."

I leave it at that, and she leaves it at that, and her unsteady breath makes me hold her tighter. Not your fault, hacker. The worst part of all this is that it's not your fault Pell specifically took the fall, and nobody specific can get held accountable, and I have nowhere to put any of this, and the fire in me has resorted to melting all my functions from the heart to the lungs.

Just need a moment not thinking about any of this. Or a year.

The two of us watch the bay for much of the day.

- 33 -

Camped out in a cramped modular shed for the night. Abandoned construction site by the water, some kind of water lock for one of the seawater canals that didn't end up coming to fruition. Supposed to be more seasonal workers coming next year to fill it back out, and a guard comes by every couple weeks, but we've got a contingency in case that happens, and it's nice to be by the sea anyway.

We leave the window open to let in some sea air, and we watch another couple movies that night, camped out on the cheap carpet floor. Killing Sarah and Killing Sarah II. Thriller double feature. Sometime after the sun sets Rhodes gets to sleep.

-

I step onto the little scrap wood porch to get some air. In my thirties I picked up smoking and in my forties I dropped it, but occasionally I find a real good spot to smoke. I didn't really drop it, to be honest. Could go for a joint right now. But instead I just sip water and eat some peaches out of the can.

Over there. That one. That's my favorite superfreighter I've seen so far. Short lengthwise but tall as the rest, with big towers all along its length with blinking yellow lights, and called the CS PARAGON. I like it because it looks very stupid. The front is all curved and bent forward and downward like the snout of an animal. Check in. Finger tapping against the wood railing.

I glance back, and then call through the window. "All clear," I say, and the sea air catches my voice and turns it into fog.

Sound of light footsteps, and then Rhodes comes up to the open sill, rubbing at the eye closer to her cybernetic. "Sorry, I just got worried," she grunts.

"No problem. Mind's just racing too much to sleep."

She gives me a tired, friendly grin. Her mandibles go slack. "Okay."

I lean against the railing a bit. "Want to go on a night walk?"

"Sure," she says, laughing faintly.

-

Not much shore to speak of here, but plenty of flat concrete, and I carry Rhodes atop me like she's an armed lookout. Unlit in most parts, but the moon is nearly full this time of the month and it's not hard to avoid the little divots in the rocks and mooncrete.

"What were you thinking about?" she asks, leaning against my head to whisper in my ear.

"Not much," I say. "Pell a little bit, then I was looking at that stupid freighter."

"Is it just Pell, not Pelleratz?"

I nod. "Just Pell."

She grips me by the shoulders to hold on. I go up a little escarpment up between two railings and by a bench. Conceivably could have been a good spot to watch the water, but it reeks of rust. We go on. Rhodes speaks again. "She, ah, was she... can I ask about her?"

"Shoot." I guess I can't work up any reason not to talk about her. Dead is dead. Things lay where they will, now.

"You okay with moving on?" Her voice cracks slightly. "I mean, I-I'm worried, and have been really worried, that I'm... that we shouldn't be together, 'cus I'm fucking it up."

I shrug, which bumps her up and down. "Hurt me bad when she died, but we were often pretty distant. Just gets to be bad if someone you know that long goes."

"...was your wife, though."

"Sure. Was a lot of things. Got me to do a lot of things."

I hear her buzz with her mouth a second, and then settle down. "Fair, I guess. Was all I wanted to know. I know it's kind of selfish."

A little chilly over here on the open seawalk. Wind's picking up. "Can I ask you a selfish question, then?"

"Fuck it, yeah."

I glance up at her above me, peering down at my face. "Why'd you never answer any of the letters back?"

She glances away. "I did, once," she says.

"Never got it."

"I gave you all clear, after one. I-I did it on accident."

I roll my eyes and huff. "Never noticed, don't really care. Why'd you never do it on purpose."

"To make you give up," she murmurs. "Give up on me. I got addicted to this idea of running away and forgetting about everything. Just like last time."

"But I don't want that," I say, stupidly enough.

"I know. I wish I didn't do it."

I grip her legs softly to make sure she doesn't fall off, and we head down a little scaffold to the beach once again. The sand is moist with the sea air. "I guess we're just talking in circles."

She exhales. "Yeah. I guess my explanation doesn't, like, get better."

"S'fine."

"I really fucked up," Rhodes says now, "and been trying not to think about it. Like we could have spent this whole time together and been girlfriends. I always do this shit. A-And I'm not asking you to feel bad for me, I'm just sorry. I won't pull that shit again, and I don't... really wanna think about it."

Can't say I disagree. All of me is trying to claw her back, claw back the notion that we have a future. I briefly felt like I had one, with her. I want that feeling back at all costs. Maybe why I'm so quick to forgive and forget. I just want tonight to go nice. I want every night to be nice. I speak up again after a little while. "What do you want to think about instead?"

"Tshhh..."

I smile. "What are you thinking about, usually."

She pauses, and rests her claws on my hair. I stop short to examine a little dry culvert, before stepping over it. Then she speaks, and her tone has become a little wistful, a little fairylike. "I can tell you exactly what," she says. "It's like this.

-

"There's a little wind in Laudenberger Square right now. There's a busker playing keyboard to a couple humans, one tall and one short, with expensive puffy jackets. I think it looks like they're condescending, but—but I don't think the busker cares. There's a Tasran with guild clothes, he has a nice bottle of something, camped out on a bench. Maybe he's asleep. He's drooling all over himself. There's two city busses on Ferra Street right north of there, one going east, one going west. I see some Neriak with pretty orange eyes in the back seat of one. Where'd he come from?

"A-And I see... ah... I see a little kid on Port 15 West stomping around in a puddle, with really raggy clothes. I think maybe she's homeless, or maybe she snuck out.

"I see someone with glowsticks around their hands... someplace in Baultriel, the Gutters, somewhere fun and dingy and loud, but outside that place... and then I see, like, fifteen guys in yellow vests on a window sill at a construction site, pretty close to us now, and... five of them are smoking, two are drinking. I think they got to be talking about something stupid, because they keep laughing about nothing and smiling like idiots.

"Over there, that's the ground floor entrances of the Platatie building, you know, ah, the one with all the greenhouses in all the windowsills, and the rotating door is spinning like someone's in there, but there's nobody. I think we just missed 'em. I see someone pushing a shopping cart onto a subway train. I see two people on that train, on their datapads, I see 'em freaking out over something on the screens. I think it's gonna rain on Sundown Street.

"I think it's gonna rain there, and I think it will feel nice."

-

Her head swivelling around, her eyes gone someplace else, her smile faint. We are perched, now, on a railinged ledge in front of a seaside convenience store with all the lights off. Staring out at the bay. I'm staring out, but Rhodes is staring elsewhere. Always like that with this girl.

"You gonna miss the camera net?" I ask her, quietly.

She tilts back down to me, resting her hands on her knees by the sides of my head. "It mostly sucks. I still can't tune it out."

"Seem attached to the city. Seem like you'll miss seeing it when the backdoor's gone."

But Rhodes just smiles wider at that, her mandibles so loose and playful. "Tshhh, yeah. I will. But it'll still be here."

I bring my arms up and clasp the railing, and the sea air blows through the both of us for a while. Sounds of waves lapping up against a concrete shore, sounds of horns from far, far off, trainyards in warehouses and ships in port. The rattling of chains against the wind. "Sure," I laugh, after a little while.

"You miss Stromm's Landing at all, Nelly?"

I look up. Hard to tell if she asked it, or if someone else did. My gaze goes level again, where the dim clouds meet the horizon. "No idea." But then I pause, and wince, and realize I do know. "...No."

She cackles softly. "Why not?"

"I don't know. Just been there too long." My metal hand grips the hollow railing tight. Enough effort and I could shatter the thing. "All the people I loved are dead or dying. Stromm's Landing just looks like a place where I'll be buried."

"What about who's left? You ran with people, still, right?"

The irony of what I say makes me laugh. "Guess I figure they can assume I'm dead."

"Ha! Oh, god."

"Never said I didn't get it."

She just pauses, and eventually replies, though her voice is a lot lighter again, like the airs have carried her up and away. "I think Haraad will be a cool place to be."

I take a deep breath and soak it in, and smile. "Let's get there."

- 34 -

My footsteps light. Light enough to fade into the night mist like it is nothing at all. Shoes sinking into the soft sand along the shore. Unarmed now. Not unarmed, Nelly. Clenching my fist. Practically unarmed. Breath so heavy. Stupid fuck-up. Stupid fucking oversight. Approaching the shed again by the water and having to remember, each step, heel to toe, don't scrape, no sudden movements. I keep my arms out wide to avoid my shirt sliding against itself. The sounds of uneven waves against rocks. Not unarmed, Nelly. Show 'em hell. No time for complicated semaphore. Check in, I tap. All clear, she replies. I approach from a low angle by the water, clambering softly up on a concrete block.

The can of peaches is gone. Took it inside with him. Means he was hungry or gathering evidence. Not unarmed, Nelly. I clench my metal fist. Stupid fucking plan. Don't go back to the scene of the crime. Fucked if you don't. Fucked if that vest gets anywhere. Mask made you distinctive. I step up further along.

The sounds of the creaky floor inside the shed.

I come up beside the porch as a silhouette shrouded in the nothingness of the black Cestabin Sea at night, and I peer inside where a gentle light pours outward.

A human with pale and aged skin, wearing a tight undershirt with the colors faded to gray, and a raggy windbreaker with all the threads loose. He is crouched by the New Bug Bag and stuffing his hands inside it, pulling aside the opening, dipping his thin head inward. I can see that his hair is all scuffed from years without trim, and he holds a plastic lighter in his spare hand, holding it close to see his work more clearly. My open can of peaches sits beside him with the plastic spoon still in.

You looking for evidence, or are you just scavenging? If you walk out of there with that vest it puts us in trouble. How to communicate such a thing to someone. I crane my head silently to try to spot something attached to either ear of his, but see nothing. If he is signaling back to his handler, he is doing it in his head—an implant could do that.

I loom there.

The ruffling of fabric as he stands up, slowly, and holds out the ballistic vest to look at it, grasping the collar in one hand and holding up the lighter. Must be able to see the damage to the backside, the remnants of a bullet. He moves with hardly a sound, but the creaky floor isn't helping him. He's used to staying unnoticed. But Rhodes noticed you. She couldn't help it.

Can't stop him here. He'd hear my steps. Just waiting, now.

He slips on the vest with hesitation, and then crouches back down.

-

Cans of food. Datapad, which he briefly flicks on, then flicks off upon reaching the lock screen. The shotgun. Did you leave it loaded? Four in the tube, none in the chamber. He can figure it out if he's curious enough. He lifts it up by the front grip and weighs it up. My breath escaping me and entering me, but not at the right pace, and I'm losing oxygen in my lungs. Did you leave it loaded? Come on, man. Just leave it. Be smart. Not your shit to take. Be smart. Who would leave a stash like this here and not come back for it. Fucking greedy asshole. Don't make me stop you.

I catch a glimpse of his eyes in the dark interior. Brown irises and no expression in them. He flicks the lighter off for a moment, and I hear him playing around with my gun—then the loud sounds of him checking the chamber, then cycling the bolt.

Air turns cold all of a sudden.

He slips the shotgun back in the bag, and then starts to put the bag's strap over his shoulder without zipping the top.

-

I await beside the small plank staircase leading upward, slightly hunched to keep my figure blacked out by the darkened sand of the beach, and hold my breath. He spends another moment searching about—must see the bedding Rhodes was using, but won't find much else—and then I hear him step onto the porch, and see his lithe figure stand out against the moonlit sky. Then he turns towards me and comes nearly to the stairs, and as he inhales a breath, I speak.

"Stop," I command.

He does, and his legs shake briefly. His old and intense eyes trying to find me in the dark, and his hands out and open at his side. I see now, from this position, a scraggly black beard crawling along his face, and the word 'BAULTRIEL' on a patch on the vest. "Yes," he whispers.

"Not your shit to take."

"Mine now." And he dips his head slightly. "Need it. Let me take it." Then something darker in his voice. "Don't come closer."

My fist clenches. I cannot be much more visible to him than a mote in the sky. Even if you graze 'em, they'll still be mostly dead. He could pull my gun out of the bag and turn me to paste quick, or even fire from within the bag. And could buy himself time if he steps backward or I stumble on the steps. He must know what I mean to do with him. Am I close enough to stop him if he wants me dead all of a sudden? Use your words, kiddo. "You can take the food," I murmur. "But you don't want the gun or vest. Better you don't."

"I will give you back the mask," he says flatly. His voice creaks slightly under some unforeseen weight. Lying. Is he lying. Answer if he's lying.

"You do not want any of that shit. It's going to get you killed. It's stolen. It's bad to have." It's not something you want. Need to get rid of it. Should have gotten rid of it. Evidence. Bad evidence. It could get us tracked down. It could fuck up the Baultriel play. My mind is racing bad now. Come on. Come on.

The sea crashes against the shore.

I see his free hand start to move.

Then I move. Happens before I'm aware. Some thousand leagues I move in an instant and then swing my arm and collide with him, I am not aiming at any part of him in particular, and my metal hand touches where his neck meets his torso. Something bad happens. Guess I would describe it as his chest splashing against the porch.

The rest of him collapses, and the bag drops to the ground, and a terrible and short sound comes from his broken body.

-

Washing myself in the seawater. Still trembling. A wave nearly bowls me over. I dispose of the man's body here.

-

I get back to Rhodes up the walk a hundred meters. Brought the vest, in its ripped-apart and bloody state, and the rest of our things in the bag, including every bit of trash. We talk quietly about what happened, but not much, and not much of use. Tired out of my mind and rattled. We leave to find better shelter.