Moonful of silver, p.20
Moonful of Silver, page 20
When his rationality returned, he observed the destruction and jolted back. “Sweet mother of silt! What have I done?” he whispered.
This wasn’t how a good leader was supposed to act. A disaster lay strewn around him. Glass, broken parts, and paper smothered the floor, stifling the room in his infantile outburst. Something dark stained the wall beside him. His desk and chair in ruins.
“Curse that woman!” he cried while struggling to keep his anger in check. This was Maria’s fault. If she’d only accept him, everything would fall into place. He’d finally have the perfect life—the one Benito owed him.
He scratched his head, wondering how he’d clean up this mess—not only the wreckage of his office. Sniffing out a traitor. Killing that nameless stranger. Even marrying Maria would help. And if she did still didn’t agree to it . . . Well, he had something else in mind for her.
One thing at a time. First, let the stranger stew in her own flesh. Let her burn for a while as the device he’d planted on Ramone’s body hacked through her collar’s firewalls. And then—he held the captain’s pistol in his hand, and polished its barrel—then let them regret the moment they dared to cross a captain in his own town.
NAMELESS
Present
When the beam cut off, Nameless knew she was dead. The absence of the sun’s heat melting her muscles into a curdle of burned flesh could only have come from the end of her life. But when she opened her eyes, she was still in the storage chamber, chained to the table, impossibly alive.
She flexed what remained of her fingers, and a searing arrow shot through her nerves. Nameless shrieked, not daring to look at how much of her skin was left.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” A voice reached through her pain.
She tilted her head, blinking away the sweat that stained her vision in blurs.
“Sanchez?” she said.
He stepped from the machine and held something aloft. “I found this on my hover. Figured it was yours.”
The nanocam.
Nameless gritted her teeth and forced her neck to stiffen so she could see his face. Read his expression. And when she finally met his eyes, she drowned in his disappointment.
“I thought you were different,” he continued. “The way you talked about respect. The way you saw people as people, and not as tools. But I guess I was mistaken. Seems I was wrong about a lot of things.”
He walked around the table and stood over Ramone’s body.
“Ramone was a good man.” Sanchez picked up the pistol and scanner that had been left on top of his prostrate form. “He was always looking out for his friend Diego. I always wanted a friend.”
“Sanchez,” she whispered.
His shoulders tensed at the sound of his name. “There was a time when I thought we might have been friends. I was friends with Maria once. Even helped her escape, back when I believed it would’ve done her good. But that’s the problem with having friendships—they always end in disappointment, don’t they? Just like Ramone. He had a friend, and look where that got him. Diego. Alessandro. Are you even sorry you got them killed?”
The question hung between them, and the silence that bridged the void gave him all the answer he needed.
“You don’t need to admit it. I know it was you. Did he deserve it? Does anyone? What the captain makes us do—it isn’t right. But at least he’s honest about it.”
Sanchez spun to her and held her own laser-pistol to her forehead. “I know you sabotaged Diego’s trailer. And I know you put this thing, whatever it is, on my hover. What stops me from pulling the trigger right now, huh, friend?”
Nameless didn’t answer. Just kept staring at the boy. He stood so close, she could’ve reached out with her good arm and taken his scanner. Cycled through the frequencies and dropped him where he stood. Even Esteban had known not to get this close. He glanced down at her hand on the table, one wrist-flick from his holster. Almost like he wanted her to do it, as if he were asking her to make a move. But she wouldn’t.
“You deserved better,” she said.
Sanchez’s fingertips quivered.
“I’m sorry.” Nameless fought against the pain to say it. “Sanchez. I’m sorry.”
He tensed, sending his shakes into overdrive, then pulled the pistol away from her head and laid it back on Ramone. Breathless. He put her scanner on the edge of Ramone’s table. Then he paced around the foot of where she lay and slapped the nanocam onto the drilling machine. It hung there, watching her.
Sanchez chugged down air, on the brink of falling apart.
Nameless sighed. “Esteban doesn’t know you’re here, does he? Don’t worry. I won’t tell him.”
Sanchez turned to her, eyes brimming with tears, and she nodded at him, the most reassuring gesture she could make.
“They know your name is M, by the way.”
Nameless scowled. “That’s not my name.”
“They’ve bypassed the first firewall in your collar. We all know what it says. Can’t you be honest about anything?”
“That’s not my name!” she screamed.
“Have it your way, Mallory.” Sanchez dipped his head. “Forgive me.” He switched on the beam and fled down the tunnel.
The return of that blinding heat thrust Nameless into a convulsion. But she breathed through it. That was all she could do—breathe.
Sanchez had left the scanner on the table next to her. She reached for it with her free hand. The beam sliced into her dying palm as she shifted position. But she snatched out, and her fingertips brushed Ramone’s arm.
She clung to him and pulled, yanking her body against the silver band that held her biceps to the tabletop.
Nameless tugged and heaved and labored her way down Ramone’s arm until she reached his wrist, and the tip of the scanner. She fought against every impulse, against the heat burning her alive, against the socket of her shoulder that begged to be released, against the black curtain of unconsciousness creeping across her vision, against the pulse in her head that coaxed her into collapsing, against the sweat and tears and blood and blisters and the pull of her collar as it lodged against her throat. She fought with every agonizing breath, hurled with one final effort, and grabbed the scanner from Ramone’s table.
In one fluid motion, she twisted toward the machine, aimed the scanner at the nanocam Sanchez had stuck to it, and fired.
A blast of heat sent her rolling from the table, and she blacked out just before her face hit the ground.
IF NAMELESS HADN’T died from the burning of her flesh, then she was certainly dead now the machine had exploded. Those nanocams were lethal.
She opened her eyes and only black met her vision. Nothing but colorless depths that stripped her of any sign she had survived.
Dust reached her lungs and she let out a cough. As her chest rose and fell, she realized the impossible had struck her twice that day, and yes, she hadn’t passed beyond the plain of the living—she was still in that storage room. Still, somehow, alive.
Her senses returned in waves. First, the smell of charred flesh. Her own. And maybe Ramone’s? She extended her good hand and pulled herself up. Ramone was a black stump, the blast stripping him of skin and flesh, and leaving him with barely his bones to show for it. That was the first thing her eyes processed in the dim light of the storage room. The crackle of hot stone surrounded her. She reached for her pistol and the scanner she’d dropped. Only . . . where she felt her arm should be, there was empty air.
She looked down for the chain that had held her captive, but it still remained on the table, along with the blackened skeleton of her bicep. Detached from the rest of her. Yet, there was no bleeding. No pouring from the wound. Had the heat somehow cauterized it while blasting her limb away from her? She couldn’t explain it. She couldn’t understand. She was here. Her arm was there. So she leaned down and collected the scanner and pistol with her one remaining arm, awkwardly attaching them to her holster.
How long had she been down here alone? For how much longer?
Her breath hitched. She reached for her collar. Part of it had melted, and the other half slipped from her neck, tilting away from her larynx. Every inhale was a punch to her throat, and she had to suck in gasps of air to fill enough of her lungs and take the next breath. It was like being strangled by a weak hand.
Still, she pushed herself toward the tunnel. The darkness of the mine seeped into her aching head, disorienting her, sending her bumping into walls as she crept methodically up and up toward the surface.
As the tunnel opened onto the giant rim of oblivion, a faint flash of red and the sound of sirens emerged from the staircase that led back to Esteban’s dome.
Alarms. And they were close. They didn’t carry far in the Moon’s artificial air. Her head spun too much to tackle Esteban and his army of scanners.
Nameless looked skyward, to the sheer wall stretching above her. And to its side, an opening. She shuffled over and found a concealed elevator operated by a pulley. The workers’ entrance to the mine. She tugged at the lever. Even in the weightlessness of the Moon’s thin gravity, it took all her strength to heave herself up, inch by inch, to the surface.
When she tugged her last and found the dust, she collapsed face down. Time dissipated around her. She crawled forward, passing out between each terrible strain on her limbs. It could have been a Moonday between each step. It might have been seconds. All she knew was that with every moment of consciousness, she made one brief increment of progress. And then, finally, she found herself on the street.
A voice above her.
Gabe.
The old man.
What was he saying?
His arms around her. And then she was saddled on her hover.
“Across the plain. I programmed a map. Just follow it. Nameless! Can you hear me?”
Yes, Gabe. The map. What map?
All she could manage was a nod.
“Ay caramba. Go, go, go!”
She flicked her wrist and the hover lurched forward. In front of her, a blue holo displayed a line. She followed it, forcing herself to remain awake. And eventually, the holo told her she had reached her destination.
A cave in the side of a crater. She stumbled from the hover and landed inside the cave. How was she still alive? It was impossible, but somehow she was shielded from day and night, what remained of her collar sustaining her in the darkness of the cavern. How? Where was the atmosphere coming from?
And yet, it came.
She abandoned herself to the all-consuming dark, and focused all her efforts on the next breath. And the next. And the comfort of knowing, however impossible it seemed, that there would at least be another to follow it.
For now.
GABE
Present
Santos santos, what had he done? All he wanted was to help. Was it so wrong to help? Why should he be punished for trying to fix things?
First, Jo. Then, Maria. Now, Nameless.
He should have done more with Jo. That poor girl. She had such potential, and he’d squandered it. Andreas’s death. So much destruction when that structure had collapsed, and all because he’d failed her. He hadn’t pushed her enough, hadn’t done everything in his power to help her. And now, where was Jo?
Never mind Jo. Where was he? Stuck in the badlands working for a lunatic. Ignoring the girl trapped in a glasshouse who needed his help. He’d let Maria down for so long. What had he done to help her out of that prison? Too little, too late. That’s what.
And worst of all, he hadn’t even been the one to do it. His frail heart was too cowardly to try. Instead, he’d insisted Nameless be the one to save her.
Nameless. Can you ever forgive me, amiga?
She looked so lost when he found her crawling in the dust, one-armed and broken.
He didn’t question how she’d got there, how she’d escaped Esteban and his mine. All that mattered was that she was alive. Barely. But alive enough.
La chica pobre. She reminded him so much of Jo. Helpless. Unbelonging. Like a flower in the dust. He couldn’t let her wither and die.
“Nameless!” He picked her up, and she glanced at him with glass eyes, nothing behind them. He cradled her to his chest. “Nameless.” If only he knew her name, something familiar to lure her into consciousness—to stir her understanding that she needed to move. “Come back to me, Nameless. We can’t be here. Someone will see.”
He dragged her through the street, to his garage. Unseen, for now.
“Nameless, I’m so sorry. Can you ever forgive me?”
But her eyes remained empty.
Tears brimmed until they fell, dripping onto her face to trickle over her lips. A spark flashed across her. She was still in there, somewhere. There must still be a mind beyond the instinct for survival that had brought her to him.
Water. She needed water.
He laid her on the ground and ran to fetch a pail. Gabe brought it to her lips and poured slowly. Cool liquid cascaded down her throat.
She spluttered, retching over his shoes.
“Nameless. You’re alive!”
She couldn’t hear him. He hardly heard himself over the violence of her retching. It didn’t matter. He knew what she needed and she had it now.
Gabe pressed the pail into her hand and ran to her waiting MULE. He guided it to where she lay, her one arm around the bucket.
With a flourish, he removed some tools and opened the guidance computer to program a route on the holo-projector. He cycled through the crater wall until he found it—the cave he’d hidden inside on his flight from HQ, where he’d set up an atmospheric conditioning unit and spent so many nights praying for Jo’s safety, regretting the loss of Andreas, trying to think of a way to fix what had happened, and failing.
Machines, he could fix. But people? People broke, and there was no fixing them. At least, that’s what he’d believed. He looked down at Nameless, at where she lay destitute, and realized it was because he’d tried to fix it on his own. It took a person to mend another person. The hole inside him, which had opened when Jo had caused that structure to collapse, filled up again. All because of this one-armed chica.
“Nameless.” He bent down and spun her to face him. Her eyes were closed, and he slapped her cheek. “Nameless. Can you hear me?”
She blinked, pupils twitching as they narrowed on his face. “Look, I’m not gonna lie. You’re in bad shape, amiga. But there’s a cave I know of. Across the plain. I programmed a map. Just follow it. Nameless! Can you hear me?”
She seemed to look through him rather than at him. But then—was that a nod? He could have sworn it was a nod.
He wished he could run a diagnostic on her. Get a beep of affirmation that everything would be okay. But she wasn’t a machine. She was so much more.
“You’ve got to get to the cave. I’ll come for you. Fix you up. I swear.”
He lifted her, settling her onto the MULE. She filled the saddle perfectly.
“Go, Nameless! Quickly. Before they see you.”
But she just sat there, shaking her head, as if her sheer force of will would be enough to stare death in the face and tell it, No!
Santos santos! Come on, Nameless! Don’t die on me now.
He rechecked the holomap and threw the rest of the pail in her face. Water splashed sense back into her, and her eyes startled into wakefulness, suddenly alert.
“Ay caramba. Go, go, go!”
She flicked her wrist on instinct and the hover lurched forward, disappearing across the badlands while dust settled behind it.
Be safe, amiga.
Gabe returned to his workshop. To his tools. He sat alone amidst the scraps and junk. This was where he belonged—with the rubbish. How often he’d found comfort in rusted parts. But now? Now they just looked like what they were. Useless. Pathetic. A has-been of disparate junk.
He’d run away from his failings, outpaced the if-onlys with his mending and mechanics, but still they’d found him here. Alone. Praying that Nameless reached the cave before her collar gave out.
A slow tick from his water purifier and the wheeze of his air recycler echoed through the unit—the metronome of his life. Tick, wheeze. Tick, wheeze. He might have survived, but at what price? How much damage had the cost taken on his soul? He practically heard regret grinding his mind down in that slow tick and wheeze.
But how could he stand up for Nameless? What could he do now? He’d sent her on her way, and now . . . what?
It wasn’t like he could storm the compound. Take down Esteban. Free Maria. He was an old man, riddled with a wit as broken as a burnt-out gearbox. If he left Tranquility to help Nameless, what then? Esteban would be sure to release Gabe’s whereabouts on the Lunar HQ database, and then it would only be a matter of time before two bounty hunters showed up demanding their due. His past trapped him. Made him a prisoner to fear. And no amount of cycles living in this blasted crater could change that.
Fear was his life, for Lunar’s sake. Who was he to stand up to it?
Tick. Wheeze.
You’re a coward, old man. A silt-sucking, dust-eating coward.
Knowing it didn’t make it any easier. He huffed a sigh and held his head in his hands.
What to do? How to fix it? He’d only end up making a mistake and putting someone else at risk. Wasn’t it safer down here with the garbage? Wasn’t it easier to be a discarded, rusted piece of scrap?
And yet, he was so tired of it. The cowardice. The fear. That was the problem with running away all your life—you could only run so far before tiredness kicked in.
Nameless was out there, and she needed him. She needed the parts of him that remained, whether they were scrap or not.
He stepped out of the unit and stared across the junk piles. Each piece, useless. But put together, they could be fashioned into something that worked.
Come on, you old fool. What are you going to do? Mope the rest of your days with a broken heart, tormented by regret? Or put yourself back together for the sake of this town?
He raided each pile, sifting through the jumbles of twisted pipes and metal plates, until he’d collected enough for what he needed. What she needed. To fix what she had lost.
