CHAPTER 22

I thought I knew. I thought I’d already come to terms with the future I deserve: too jagged to be held; too stained to be forgiven; love and family and safety forever out of reach.

But the possibility that Mitchell might understand raised the head of some secret inner creature that still hoped for more, and his words have utterly crushed me. That stupid hopeful creature, already dragging in its death rattle, has been put out of its misery.

Hope doesn’t leave behind a heavy carcass, though. It withers to ash and disintegrates, only emptiness in its wake. Even the weight of the guilt that had me pinned to the floor is gone, swallowed into that one hard, dense, ever-present lump of coal.

I rise to my feet. Weightless. Floating.

Mitchell looks at me and I almost think I see a flicker of some emotion, but it’s not real. It’s never real. “Gemma, I—”

“I’m going to bed.” My voice comes out hollow, void of emotion.

The spark I imagined crossing his features disappears like the mirage it is. Mitchell’s expression goes hard, flat, final. He nods .

It’s better for him this way. I’m poison. More toxic, even, than I knew until today. The door hisses open and I step through. I stand in the hall, straight and still, until I hear it slide shut behind me. Then I follow the curved passage to the exit hatch and let it fall open. I step down the ramp and out into the chaos of Hack Town.

I can’t allow Mitchell to pay for Dr. Reid’s services. I have to find a way to access my funds. And if there’s one place in the Federation I might be able to successfully have my bank account hacked, it’s here.

I will get money.

I will find someone else who can fix me.

And then, I will run.

I won’t be continuing to Oralia on Mitchell’s ship. And I won’t be taking Tori and Vince with me either. They’ll all be better off without me. I’ve never brought anything into Tori’s life but drama. And I’ve jeopardized Vince’s precious payout more than once already. Even the bad guys are better off without me. And I’ll be better off, too. At least alone I can rest assured I won’t break the people I care about along the way.

I retrace the path we took earlier. Vendors call. Pamphlets wave. Unregulated traffic buzzes overhead, polluting the indoor streets with noise and thickening the recirculated oxygen with choking toxicity. I drag in the exhaust, letting it burn through the cavity in my chest that feels so very empty except for that one hard lump of coal rattling around in the void.

I weave through dense foot traffic without catching anyone’s notice. I’m smaller than most, and I can duck under spaces between shoulders and slip through cracks in the crowd that neither Vince nor Mitchell would fit through. I brush up against coarse fur, slide against scales and skin, trying to avoid bumping the fresh bandages that seem to decorate some part of almost every body I pass.

I’m making quick progress, nearing the street with the Vitruvian Man, when I hit a crush of people. Bodies become more packed together, until even I can’t wiggle through. Shouts and cheers rise from the centre of the throng.

Another street performance must be causing the blockade.

I scoot along the edge of the living wall until I spy a space between two pairs of hips, one human and one with a tail like Ballga’s. There’s just enough room for me to squeak through. I duck and squeeze, but a sudden movement in the crowd throws the Tileah sideways. Catlike hips knock me hard into the human on my right. Then someone pushes me from behind.

I flail, flying face-first toward scummy asphalt, grasping wildly for anything in reach. My hand snags on something—the human’s hip holster. I clutch it and pull myself up.

“Filthy little pickpocket!”

Shit .

I dive ahead, but my collar tightens around my neck. A hand clutches my shirt, dragging me backward. The human whose holster I grabbed twists me roughly around to face him. I take in a tatted, bearded face with one glaring eye. A bandage covers the other. Fresh work. “I’ll teach you to—”

The one eye slides down my body and back up. Both eyebrows rise. I don’t think he was expecting a girl.

“I’m sorry, uh, sir,” I choke out against the twisted fabric at my neckline. “I wasn’t trying to steal your blaster. I fell and—”

“Aww, it’s okay, sweetie.” He grins, loosening his chokehold on the back of my shirt slightly, but only so he can tug me closer. So close the damp heat of his sour-smelling breath wafts against my cheek when he adds, “I know a way you can pay me back.”

Double shit .

This guy’s more than twice my size, bigger than Mitchell or Vince, and armed. And the way he’s looking at me, he’s the kind of guy who thinks he has the right to do what he wants with whatever he touches.

“There’s nothing to pay back. I didn’t steal anything.”

Still clutching the scruff of my shirt with one hand, he circles his other moist palm around the bare skin of my midriff. “Stole my heart with those pretty blue eyes.”

His grin only widens when I squirm, revealing dental implants—his teeth spike up in two rows of sharp points like a Marl’s. Creepy. I don’t want to know what kind of weird shit he had done to his eye.

“I can see you have classy taste in vices.” He looks in my eyes and I know he’s referencing the silver stains. “I’ve got a full vial back on my ship, and I’m more than willing to share with a sweet little thing like you.”

Ugh. If I were glitching right now, would I take his offer? I’m as disgusted with myself as I am with him.

I just hope a polite decline will get me out of this mess without a struggle.

“That’s… that’s flattering, but I have an appointment I need to get to, so I’m going to have to ask you to let go of me now.”

“Shame,” he says. He unclenches his fist from the back of my shirt. The fabric at my neck goes slack.

I suck in a relieved breath. Guess the guy just comes on really strong. I thought he was going to—

The hand that left my neck closes tight and hard around my upper arm. “We’ll have to make it quick, then.” He yanks me toward the dark recess between a Fast Credits and a cigarette depot.

“Let me go!” I dig my heels into the grimy street, wrenching my arm hard. Pain screams through my shoulder, reminding me just how recently I dislocated it .

Eyepatch keeps pulling me by my throbbing arm. Annoyed heads turn. But nobody seems to care that this creep’s dragging a struggling woman through the crowd. They’re only pissed that they had to give up half a step of precious space to let us through.

Assholes.

Gunfire’s almost guaranteed to garner unwanted attention, but this guy is giving me no choice. With my free arm, I reach across my body and under my fluffy skirt, grabbing the concealed blaster. In less than a blink I’ve got it shoved against his heart.

“Let. The fuck. Go.”

Eyepatch drops my arm, the movement sending another shock of pain radiating out from my shoulder joint. He takes a step back, raises his palms. “Hey, sweetie, I didn’t mean—”

My eyes flick to the blaster holstered at his hip. “Hands on the back of your head.”

“Come on now—”

Light flashes as I shoot the street a couple centimetres from his toe. Sizzling reek curls into the air like smoke from a dropped cigarette. My blaster’s trained on his chest again. “I said, hands on your piece of shit skull. ”

Eyepatch obeys.

“Turn and face the other way.” I’m tracking the crowd as he follows my order. Our interaction has earned us a bubble of empty space on the busy street. Most people eye my raised gun then look away, giving us a wide berth. Others take in the show from a distance, no doubt hoping to see blood.

I fucking hate this place.

A little voice inside me pleads for me to turn around and go home.

And by home, that idiot voice means back to the ship. Back to the people I care about.

But home is a lie. This shithole is the exact kind of place I deserve. The exact kind of world my family has built.

Most people watching my faceoff with Eyepatch don’t seem like much of a threat. But a group of armed males whispering to each other on my front right worries me. There are three of them—two scaly humanoids and a human. What they want with me, I don’t bother imagining. I don’t like the glint in the human’s eye or the way the trio keeps glancing at me as they murmur to each other.

“See the three men to your right—two reptilians and a human?” I say to the back of Eyepatch’s head. His big, tattooed fingers thread through short, dark hair. “When I say go, you’re going to tear that bandage off your face, put your hands back on your head, walk directly toward them, and show off your new eye. Got it?”

“You’re crazy, they’ll—”

I poke him in the back with the blaster. “Go.”

Eyepatch spews a stream of profanities, but he obeys .

“Don’t forget to give them a big smile,” I call over my shoulder, already darting toward the crowd.

I keep my blaster in hand this time. Apparently if you’re a woman in this town, respect is a warm gun.

This time, I push through the throng with ease. My new strategy is to press my blaster into the back of whoever stands in my way and order them to move.

When I make it through the ten-man-deep clog of bodies, I discover the reason for the crowd. A makeshift boxing ring has been set up in the centre of the street. People press in around it, cheering and booing and calling out bets. Some put their money on a fighter dubbed “Blue” and others on “The Gorilla.”

I push to the front as a squat blur of muscle and motion barrels past my vision—a human man with stumps for legs. He charges forward on dirty, fabric-wrapped knuckles, his burly arms dripping with sweat. Across the ring, a tall, wiry Varun shifts his weight in a boxer’s stance, ear cocked like he’s listening intently. I don’t see his face ’til he swivels to the side, narrowly dodging a fly-by attack from the human. Empty black sockets glare above the Varun’s blue-skinned cheekbones. He’s fighting blind.

Nausea turns my stomach.

It’s not the fight pushing bile up my throat, nor the competitors’ disabilities. It’s that these can only be people whose bodies and lives have been mutilated by failed surgical jobs. They likely spent their life savings on bodywork gone wrong or lost to infection, and now they’re stuck here in Hack Town with no other way to earn their next meal.

If they had access to the kind of medical care I took for granted all my life, neither of them would be in this mess.

The world I deserve, I tell myself. But it’s not the world these men deserve.

“Slash him, Gorilla!” the Sevvie next to me yells as the legless man’s burly arms carry him around the edge of the ring. A metallic clang rings out every time the fighter jams a fist to the ground. I squint at his wrapped hands as he barrels by my sightline. Sharp, heavy-duty knuckle studs glint pink and yellow in the reflected light of nearby signs. I can’t tell if they’re modded to his body or if it’s some kind of weapon.

I glance at the blind Varun. He doesn’t seem to stand a chance, and I can’t bear the thought of those knuckle-studs cutting into his delicate, amphibious flesh.

Gorilla charges again. I squeeze my eyes shut as he hooks one big, metal-studded fist into the air, slamming it toward the Varun as momentum lets Gorilla’s body pivot around on the other arm.

The crowd goes wild. I open my eyes and squint at the ring just in time to see the blind Varun drag a gruesome, spiked fist of his own across Gorilla’s upraised underarm. Metal talons retract into blue-skinned fingertips .

Blood gushes from Gorilla’s deeply gored striking arm. The Varun must have slashed an artery. Gorilla limps away, hand over hand, retreating as fast as his injury lets him. The blind Varun’s bare webbed feet slap the grimy asphalt as he closes in on his injured opponent.

“Kill! Kill! Kill!” the crowd chants. God, I hope it’s a figure of speech and these people are not actually fighting to the death.

My eyes fix on the limping Gorilla. Fix on the red, red blood running in streaks down his muscled arm.

I yank my gaze away just as the crowd erupts in a crescendo of vicious triumph. Turn and push blindly through the tangle of bodies, hand trembling on my blaster’s grip. Gasping for air. Gagging. But it’s not the press of bodies, not the choke of recirculated smog that blocks my lungs. I’m gagging on blood. Gagging on golden vomit.

Somehow, I break through the far side of the crowd. I stumble toward a building, chest heaving. My palm hits the glasslike cover of the giant, brightly lit screen that swaths the storefront. I sag against the moving picture, resting my perspiring forehead against its cool, smooth surface.

Breathe.

I can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t—

I just have to get my breathing under control. Just have to focus on the task at hand. Just have to do the next thing. That’s what you do when you’re on the run. The next thing.

And I will always be running.

That knowledge brings back the weirdly calm emptiness. Breathe in. Breathe out.

I stand. Straighten my shoulders. Grip my blaster tighter.

On the opposite street corner, Military Grade Skeletal Reinforcement and Joint Modification burns in bright-white block font. A robotic statue of the Vitruvian Man with transparent skin splays its limbs, bolted to the top of the sign. Every so often he lets go of the ring that encircles him to flex an arm, showing off glimmering, bioengineered elbow, wrist, and shoulder joints.

That’s where we turned before.

I dodge through foot traffic, blaster still clutched tight, and follow a group of tall, shaggy-furred Sevvies turning down the narrow side street. The spider dancers no longer twirl overhead, but plenty of people bustle about their business, animating the street with clusters of movement.

I peek between the backs of two Sevvies. There it is. Traceless Banking Transfers. The well-lit facade and respectable-looking signage exude an encouraging air of legitimacy.

I hope to God they can help me .

As I move to pass the Sevvies, I fix my eyes on the banking building. Its door slides open and—

Shit.

I recognize the tall figure, the dark hair, the chiselled profile of the man who emerges.

Vince.

I thought he was paying a visit to the spider dancer.