Unity by Elly Bangs (free e reader txt) 📕

“’Course,” I answered.

“Well,” she said, uncertainly, shifting her weight between the sheets. “Are you okay?”

“Sure I am. Why?”

“I don’t know how to say this.”

“Well then, babe, say it anyway.”

“I can’t really . . . explain it. But there’s this weird . . . feeling, I get from you sometimes. Just this weird feeling.”

I swallowed and listened carefully. “Oh yeah?”

“It was a few weeks ago. It was the day they found your friend—Charlie?—in a coma. Suddenly I got this weird . . . vibe, from you. I was afraid to say anything about it. I didn’t know how to explain it. Like something about you was . . . different. Strange.”

I swallowed involuntarily. “I was just upset about Charlie.”

“Somehow I felt like it was something deeper than that. I’m sorry. I know this all sounds . . . so. . . .”

“No, go on.”

“Well, after a while I stopped getting that feeling about you, so I figured it was nothing. But . . . today, when you came home, it was back again.”

I held still and did not speak.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she sighed. “Don’t mind me. I’m just being hormonal.”

“Probably.”

I watched, anxiously, the slow rise and fall of her breasts under the moonlight-traced sheets.

“I love you so much, Rutger,” she whispered to me.

Only when I knew she was asleep did I go back to work on the details.

ALEXEI

Oversized armored cargo trucks like this one wandered the entire continental wasteland wherever the dim promise of profit called to them, following no real schedule or defined route; there was no safer place for us now than out here, passing the last fringes of Medusan influence. Once the truck reached Greenglass Mountain to refuel for the final leg of the journey to Phoenix, we’d be entering the deep wasteland, where banditry was much more common. At this rate we wouldn’t get that far until noon tomorrow.

I opted to give my clients some space to themselves in the cargo compartment while I kept watch from the small canopy-covered nest on the roof, not only because it made tactical sense. I could only assume they’d overheard my entire call with Duke, and now needed some time to decide whether to trust me or shoot me. Meanwhile, I stared out across the landscape as the sun set through the multi-colored layers of dust and distant pollution. The stars shone more brilliantly as we crawled farther from the coast, and the moon was a sliver of a crescent. Tomorrow it would be new.

I should have been thinking about Duke’s plans to skin me alive, or Naoto’s pistol, or Danae’s mysterious implant, but all I could think about was the girl in the market. I knew better than to let myself believe it, but she had looked to me exactly like the child in my dream on the night we left Bloom: she had looked just like Eryn, as Eryn had appeared, what, sixteen years ago now? And for just a moment, she had turned, and it was as if my clients and the thousands of people around us had all faded out—as if she had been singing that mournful, haunting song directly to me.

I knew Eryn was gone. She must have died a decade or more ago. Just another nameless unit of collateral damage in the war. Still, I’d been seeing her in crowds ever since we’d left Bloom, and my attention kept drifting back to her gift to me, still hanging from my neck.

I clasped it in my palm and wondered what she would think of me, if she could see me now. I wondered if she’d still hold me to our promise.

I did as I always did in moments of pensive insomnia, in transit from one certain death to the next. I called Kat.

“Are you with me?” I asked.

“Till the bitter end. How about you? Still kicking?” Even through the vocal scrambler, I could hear the sleep-deprivation in her voice, only partially masked.

“The night is young,” I muttered.

“Yeah, so. On that note, exactly what the fuck were you thinking?” She didn’t sound accusatory so much as astonished.

“You mean . . . Duke.”

“Yes. I was watching your call with Duke. You know, Duke? Supreme ruler of the world’s most violent governing syndicate. Duke, who wears a jacket made of leather made of the skin of anyone he ever found just a little bit annoying. Duke, who you told to get bent and then hung up on!”

I swallowed. “I couldn’t betray my clients.”

“If that would have offended your precious honor too much, you could have, I don’t know, politely declined to mention that his targets just happened to also be your clients.”

“He would’ve found out. Sooner or later.”

“Tell me straight, Alexei.” Her voice caught momentarily. “You want him to kill you. Is that what this is? Some kind of suicide mission?”

I owed her the truth, or the closest approximation I could put into words.

“Danger,” I sighed. “I just need danger. It’s the drug keeping me alive. As long as I have it, I can think clearly, I can function. I can think about things besides Antarka. It’s when things start to get safe. That’s when I. . . .” I trailed off.

“Normally I would say you can handle a little danger,” she said after a while. “But if you keep upping your dosage like this, eventually you won’t be able to find a strong enough next hit. So what happens then?”

I filled my lungs with the dry air. The landscape was so empty, and in that moment I felt blissfully empty within it. I had everything I needed—and when this was all over, Duke would be there to give me the death I deserved.

“I just . . . have to finish this job,” I said.

Kat went silent. Even her breath.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m just peachy. Thank you for asking.”

I was afraid I’d lost her, but after a moment I heard her chewing on something,