Unity, Elly Bangs [best mobile ebook reader txt] 📗

That’s for certain. The question is, are you sure he’s a real mercenary? We don’t know this isn’t part of some twisted long con to bust the emigrant network for the Medusas. I’ve never heard of a mercenary without at least an aim-assist.”

“No,” I said, feeling over my memory of him. “He’s a mercenary. I’m sure of that much.” That shiver of vague recognition passed through me again. I looked hard at Naoto and asked, “But what’s your gut feeling? Can I trust him?”

He hesitated. After a moment, he frowned and shook his head, and we stood in a tense and awkward silence while the pressure around us slowly, steadily mounted.

The inside of the elevator doors was stenciled with the Medusas’ icon: a stylized jellyfish with tentacles symmetrically splayed, poised to sting. The Clan’s namesake was an old symbol of survival. The more poisoned and anoxic the oceans had become, the more the jellies had thrived; a hundred years since the last wild shark had cast its bones to the lightless bottom, the medusa was the only apex predator left in nature. I traced the sharp lines of red and purple, taking them in, trying to believe I’d be free of that venomous embrace after tomorrow—and then the doors slid open to admit us back into the barracks module.

I started to step out, but Naoto touched my shoulder to ask, “How are you holding up, Danae?”

I was a sweating, shuddering mess. I dreaded to worry him even more than I already had, but I had no one else to tell and it was too much to keep to myself.

“There are a lot of ways I could die between here and Redhill,” I said.

He showed me his best forced smirk. “You said you’re what, ten thousand years old?”

“Twelve,” I whispered.

He snorted a laugh. “So that makes you the most mature, world-wise human being I’ve ever met by a factor of, what, two hundred? You must have faced death many times. I’d have thought you’d be yawning at it by now.”

He was trying to comfort me, but I couldn’t help but cringe and tell him, “I never had to think about death when I was whole. I always had other bodies. If anything, I’m less adapted to mortality than you are.”

“Right.” He winced at himself. He hesitated and said, “So maybe I can’t know what it’s like for you. I’m no one and you’re everyone. I was just trying to say . . . that if anyone can get through this, I know you will.”

I cupped his cheek. “You aren’t nobody. And I’m going to miss you more than words can say.”

He reached out and wiped the tears from my face. I knew how much he wanted to tell me to stay here with him, but he was better than that. He knew I had to go—and I felt the warmth of all his misplaced admiration spreading through my chest like liquor: him loving me not as what I was, but as what I had been, could’ve been, yearned to be. I’d forgotten just how badly I needed that.

I grabbed the collar of his coat and pulled us together and kissed him violently, and he clutched at my back and moaned—and we all but helplessly slid down the elevator’s metal walls and collapsed into its corner, faces greased with sweat and tears and saliva, heartbroken and desperate for touch. The doors reeled shut.

Home.

God help me, I was going home.

ALEXEI

I didn’t know what about me had broken in Antarka, but I went about fixing it the only way I knew how: I went looking for a job.

That was all I needed to be well again, I thought—the exercise of my skills in the pursuit of their mastery. The Major taught us that the only true happiness is what a knife feels when it cuts well. So I stumbled through the cramped halls of plastic and rust, to the dim space behind the upper plankton pumps, where Stitches still loitered in the stink and noise, doling out the work no one else wanted. It was just like old times: as if I were still the new kid who’d never taken a breath of pressurized air before; who’d descended into Bloom City with nothing but a borrowed rifle and the readiness to trade other people’s lives for a weekly wage. Just like back then, I took the first job he offered me: what turned out to be smuggling one haggard and high-strung thirty-something woman out of Medusan indenture and up onto land.

Somewhere good and dry, she’d said. Where my boss won’t be able to reach me. If there was any such place—assuming her boss was the same as mine. I checked the time and dimly remembered Empress Dahlia was expecting me. She’d killed men for lesser slights than missing an appointment with her, but there was nothing I wanted less right now than to be lavished with her approval.

This new job was far out of my element—I was a destroyer, not a protector—but I had expected to feel at least a little better once I committed to the task. I thought all the noise in my head would quiet down; the alien white-heat that had lodged in the center of my chest since Antarka would finally cool. Neither happened. Nothing changed.

I tried to concentrate on the money instead. If not the paltry sum this new job would pay, then all the squid Medusa Clan was steadily funneling into my accounts for the work I’d just completed. More than enough to retire, if I wanted—but there was no solace in that thought either. On my way out of the bar, I tipped the staff a thousand-squid bill, just to see how it felt. I felt nothing.

My feet dragged under me as I passed one of the habitat level’s few windows. Dim lights trailed away into the murky brine, and I caught myself thinking compulsively about finding