Unity by Elly Bangs (free e reader txt) 📕

their uniforms; the litany of scarred and still-healing injuries that seemed to count off the thousands of kilometers they’d walked. To think of them crossing half the continent on foot, side by side with the people they had been ordered to enslave and kill.

That’s how humanity gets you, I thought: the bait and switch. The tiny flickers of sublime beauty it throws in, just to deny you even the little peace of mind you’d have if you could only dismiss them all as monsters.

It still meant something to Standard, that song. It was in the way he clasped the wire-thing hanging from his neck like a charm; how he struggled to turn his back on the girl and walk on, looking like he’d seen a ghost.

Whose ghost? I found myself wondering. One of his victims?

And why did he seem so familiar?

I wondered what his real name was, behind that one utilitarian word.

Naoto squeezed my hand to direct my attention. The truck depot waited dead ahead of us: a clot of vehicles surrounding a jumble of stacked trailers and freight containers, strung with tarps and lights to form a makeshift loading dock.

“What are you planning to barter with?” Standard asked.

Naoto gave him a cold look and started for the door to the central structure. “I told you. I’ll handle it.”

Standard stopped him with a tap on the shoulder. “A word of warning. In mobile encampments like this one, the chief of the local truck depot is often something akin to a local monarch. They control who and what can move during a storm season. They draw a lot of social clout from that.”

“They tend to be petty, authoritarian assholes,” I translated for Naoto.

Standard frowned. “I only meant . . . they’re used to being treated with deference.”

“Be quiet and let me do this,” Naoto said, knocking on the door, bristling with nervous energy. “Both of you. Not a word.”

I leaned in to him and whispered, “I know way more than you do about wastelanders. Why don’t you let me do the talking?”

“Because you’re high as a cloud.”

I wanted to disagree, but he had a point. “Then why don’t we have Standard do it?”

“Because we can’t trust him.”

I glanced back at Standard. He’d heard, but he just stood there stoically. “Why not?” I asked.

The door opened before he could answer, and a boy in coveralls led us up a spiral of stairs to the trailer at the top of the stack. Inside it was shockingly clean. The walls were lined with lavish cabinets full of liquor and trinkets, the floor covered in fine rugs, everything gleaming with yellowed sunlight through a crystal window. The depot chief sat at a scuffed desk made of real wood, attended by two armed assistants. He was a grizzled-looking man with coiffed salt-and-pepper hair.

Naoto composed himself, stepped forward, and said “We need one-way transport to Camp Phoenix.”

The chief put on a knowing smirk the moment he heard Naoto’s voice. He motioned for us all to sit down, and we did—but his armed attendants remained standing. They primed their pistols.

“So, uh.” Naoto swallowed visibly and strained to ignore the weapons. “I’m told you’re the man to speak to about that.”

The depot chief took an ornate bottle of clear alcohol from a shelf by his desk and studied the label. “Your funky outfits almost had me fooled for a second. No. I think you’d better stay right here. I’ve got a room you can call home until the Medusas arrive.”

Naoto’s body went rigid in his chair. “What?”

I tried to soak up the chemically induced levity flowing through my veins, but I felt my whole body twitch. Standard took one good look around the room, but I could only assume he concluded, as I did, that if we tried anything here we’d be dead before we could stand up.

“Tough break, friends.” The chief poured himself three fingers and swirled it around the glass before sipping. “Orders just came in a few minutes ago. I’m to look out for a pair of Bloomers trying to leave the Econ Zone. If I come across any such persons, I’m to hold them until they can be personally inspected by a Clan envoy.” He looked straight at me to add, “It’s odd. This isn’t the first time they’ve leaned on us to catch their runaways, but they’ve never leaned quite so damn hard before. I think they’re looking for somebody specific. Someone they want very badly.”

I repressed a perverse urge to laugh. I was sure we were fucked: I could barely speak straight; Standard and all his lethal skills were no help; and we were as far out of Naoto’s depth, figuratively and literally, as we could possibly be. Back in Bloom he’d never more than skirted the edges of the underworld, let alone been threatened with certain torture and death. I watched him in the corner of my eye, expecting him to snap at any second—but instead he slouched in the chair and smirked.

“And you must love the Clan,” he said, coolly. “I bet you love taking orders from them, doing their dirty work.”

The chief sneered. “It’s not worth my risk to disobey.”

“We’ll make it worth the risk.”

The chief leaned back and sipped doubtfully. “That’ll take an awful lot of worth.”

The guards put their fingers on their triggers when Naoto swung his backpack down and opened it, but the chief flapped a hand to make them stand down. Naoto lifted out the thing I’d seen jabbing into his backpack all this time: a huge brick of silvery metal, stamped with bar codes and sealed in a thick plastic blister full of oil.

“Lithium-6,” Naoto said. “Four kilos. Ninety-eight percent enriched.”

The depot chief’s eyes visibly sparkled with avarice for a split second before he could force a poker face, and I was so sure we had him that I had to cover my mouth to stifle a laugh—but I was wrong. He took another long sip and studiously avoided the brick with his eyes, and