Cold Hard Truths 1: Vices (21 page)

“Do you have any ideas where we can go?” Carver finally piped up.

I thought about it. Amdia was out of the question. It wasn’t only that I could no longer trust her; it was also that I didn’t want to put her or her loved ones in danger again. Past her and ENAD, I barely had anyone else.

“ZeZe,” I told him. “She was my boss for the past few years. She had a bit of medical training. She can help.”

“But will she?”

“I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

* * * *

“Well, look who decided to show his face,” ZeZe said. She was standing in her apartment doorway, wearing pajama bottoms that were at least a size too large for her and had small cats on them. Her T-shirt was the matching color of green as the pants, and her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. She had a knowing look on her face, not quite sarcastic, but definitely indicating she’d been expecting me to show up one of these days.

She lived in a huge building near the outskirts of the city. It was a newer development, and it wasn’t exactly the nicest place one could own in the city, but far from the worst. The newly developed building was tall and black like the others, having watermarks showing on all the walls and hints of cracking paint. The building itself smelled like bleach, which settled my stomach a bit knowing that it was relatively clean.

We’d taken the elevator up after parking the SUV a few blocks away, not really speaking to one another other than Carver asking me if I could walk the few blocks. He barely looked at me during our short stroll down the sidewalk; I was beginning to wonder if he forgot I was even there.

One thing I liked about ZeZe was that she didn’t remark on the fact that I was covered in blood and bruises, basically being propped up by another man standing in her doorway. She didn’t even look surprised, which I supposed said more about me than about her.

“Jones said you had a bit of a medical background,” Carver said.

“Not really,” she replied, her eyes flashing toward Carver. “I just know how to remove bullets, stitches, needles. All self-taught, so if he’s going to be a wuss about it, you can turn around and leave now, because I’m not an expert, and I’m not exactly gentle.”

I chuckled a bit at this, holding my ribs as I did so.

ZeZe eyed me from top to bottom, barely paying any attention to Carver.

“All right.” She sighed. “Bring him in.”

We shuffled through the open door and followed ZeZe into the living room. Carver set me down on a couch that was probably passed down from generation to generation, eventually making its way to ZeZe. Her apartment was modest, but definitely nicer than mine. She had a modern kitchen with electric appliances most people couldn’t afford. The windows were double-lined, and she had fans around the apartment, which kept the place relatively cool. A modestly sized plasma TV hung on the wall opposite the couch, and there was a small table in the middle of the room that Carver moved aside before setting me on the couch.

“I take it you two are planning on hiding out here?” ZeZe asked with her hands on her hips. She could give Carver a run for his money with how threatening and imposing they both were.

“Just until I get fixed up,” I said, squirming.

“We also need you to remove our GPS chips,” Carver said. Both ZeZe and I turned to him.

“That’ll hurt, you know,” she told him. He didn’t move a muscle. She took the hint and wandered off down the hallway. We could hear her begin to rattle around in her cabinets in the bathroom.

Carver knelt down next to the couch and slightly leaned against it. We both remained silent. I didn’t know quite what to say. Why had Carver come back for me? In some way, I must have meant something to him or else he likely would’ve left me to rot in that cell and never thought twice about it. Carver was the type to do just that. I’d never known him to be one to come back for a man down, especially not one he’d screwed over like he had me.

It was obvious that Carver had been working for Deleviv, but who knew since when. I had no idea why or how he managed to slip through the cracks like that without anyone noticing, but if anyone could manage it, it was Carver. The way Deleviv had looked at him and touched him led me to believe they were intimate. Lovers. The thought still churned in my gut. Maybe all this was an act to get information out of me that Carver thought I had. Good cop, bad cop. Deleviv and his men as the bad cops, Carver ironically the good. Maybe the entire thing was a setup and they were using me, manipulating me, using Carver to try and get information from me that I didn’t have. I wouldn’t put it past Carver for a second. He was, after all, a living statue.

ZeZe returned then with a first-aid kit, a box under her arm, and a sports drink in her hand. She set the things down on the side table, but handed me the sports drink along with three small tabs.

I sat up, looking at the tabs in my hand, then back at her.

“Drink that entire thing. It should help with the blood you lost. First, shirt and pants off. We need to remove those GPS chips from both of you boys or else whoever’s after you will be here before you can finish recovering,” ZeZe said.

I stood up and tried to pull my shirt over my head, failing miserably. ZeZe stepped toward me and carefully, almost gently, helped me pull the shirt over my head. I gave her a tired smile, then tried to pull my sweats down my legs, again failing. She helped me pull them down and allowed me to step out of them, along with my boots.

I’d never been modest, and nudity was seen on practically every street corner in the city, but the look Carver was giving ZeZe as her eyes scanned my body was impossibly colder than normal.

Carver had removed his shirt at the same time ZeZe was helping me undress. He stood off to the side, watching us.

“Here,” ZeZe said, reaching into the box on the table and pulling out a small blanket. “Since you’re so bashful.”

The tiny blanket barely wrapped around me once, but it managed to hide everything that I wanted hidden. I sat back down on the couch with a small groan. I popped the lid on the sports drink and took a huge swig, reexamining the pills in my hand. Two iron capsules, one tab of Corx. I popped them all into my mouth at the same time, washing them down with the rest of the bottle.

“This is going to hurt. I thought you could use a pick-me-up,” ZeZe said, kneeling down on the couch in the spot next to me, but still within reach of the table.

“Ah, ZeZe, you’re too good to me,” I told her.

“Shit, I could’ve told you that years ago.” She was smiling at me though.

“Can we hurry up?” That was from an extremely impatient Carver.

“Of course, Your Highness,” ZeZe replied.

The next few hours were almost worse than the torture itself. The adrenaline was gone, and all that was left was raw, undulating pain. ZeZe had given each of us a strap of leather to bite down on while she used a small electronic scanner over our bodies to locate the GPS chips. She found two in me and three in Carver. I wasn’t sure why he had three, and I didn’t ask, since usually one was put in from birth and the other upon recruitment at ENAD. ZeZe proceeded to dig a razor-sharp scalpel into my arm to retrieve the GPS, then reached in with a small pair of tongs to get the chip out. The first one was extremely painful. I screamed into the leather and clamped my jaw shut as tight as I could around the strip. The second one wasn’t quite as bad, since it was closer to the surface of my skin.

When it was Carver’s turn to be under ZeZe’s scalpel, I had a hard time watching. He didn’t make a sound and barely moved at all, but watching him in pain upset my stomach.

“I brought along the pill bottle you had hidden in the wall panel in your room at the facility,” Carver told me while ZeZe was digging into him. “It’s in the duffel bag along with your Tsutari.”

I stood up from the sofa slowly and went over to the duffel bag that was sitting on the side table. I dug through it and grabbed the pill bottle before walking to ZeZe’s small apartment washroom.

My reflection in the mirror was horrifying. I was covered in dried blood and bruised on almost every patch of visible skin on my face and neck. I had giant bags under my eyes and thick cuts all over my cheeks and throat.

I sat down on the lid of the toilet and took a deep breath, willing my thoughts to collect themselves. The pill bottle in my hand was beckoning to me, asking me to just take one or two more little neon tabs. I unscrewed the lid and reached into the tiny bottle to grab a pill, but what my fingers found their way to first was a note of paper. I stared at it for a moment or two and then slowly found myself unfolding it.

Jones, I know I’ll be long gone by the time you read this. I knew I could hide this in your emergency stash and it would be safe. Jones, don’t let anyone know you have this chip. Your life could be in danger because of it. You need to find a way to access this information, get someone you trust to help you, and leak it to the city.

This is a dangerous task, I know, but if anyone can do it, it’s you. I’ve already failed. Don’t make the same mistakes I have.

Realize what you have is going to change everything, Jones—the entire world.

—B

I peered into the pill bottle, and right there, sitting on top of my tabs of Corx, was a small computer chip. Carefully, I placed the note back inside the bottle and closed the lid. I stared at the electronic showerhead, my mind swirling.

Bruno had trusted me with this. He trusted me with something that was so important to him, he’d been thrown into the Bazaar for it. I’d been tortured for this information that I now possessed—people had died for it and lives had been changed because of it. I had no idea what my next move was, but I knew my end result. I had to fulfill Bruno’s wish and find a way to use whatever information was on this computer chip to help the city. I’d keep this chip close, and I’d end up in the same place as Bruno if it meant I went down fighting.

The Corx in the bottom of the bottle was singing to me, luring me in. I gently shook the bottle in my hand and watched as the tablets collided against one another. I pocketed the pill bottle, letting it feel heavy in my pocket, and walked back out to Carver and ZeZe.

When I returned, neither ZeZe nor Carver were in the living room. I looked around, worried for a moment before I saw the window ajar on the far end of the apartment, next to the TV.

I walked up to it, placed my open palms against the window frame, and looked out. There was a balcony just below the window, and a fire escape ladder on the left side of it. Squeezing my large body through the small window, I crawled through and began to slowly climb up the rickety metal ladder. It proved difficult, given the recent injuries, but the quiet, nagging pain in my flesh wasn’t at the forefront of my mind.

When I reached the top of the building, I hopped over the low brick ledge and stood up to look around. The city felt different somehow then, but I wasn’t sure how. For as long as I could remember, I’d been a soldier for ENAD. I hadn’t had to think on my own, plan on my own, be on my own, almost my entire life. But now, things had changed.

The neon glow from the signs was the same—still blinding and in abundance. The sounds of the city, the blaring of horns, the screaming and wailing carried up from the streets, the low, humming noise the circuit boxes made were still the same. The skyless nights and the sunless days; the foggy, musty air and the grimy quality of the buildings and the streets—it was all the same.

Maybe the city hadn’t changed. Maybe I’d changed. I rubbed my fingers against the pill bottle in my pocket.

Carver was sitting on the opposite ledge of the building with his legs tossed over the side. He was staring off into the distance, looking young and alone. His bare arm was wrapped in gauze, and the blood was already starting to seep through the thickness of it. I walked over to him and tossed my legs over the ledge next to his, and had a seat with him at my side.

“Your friend went to sleep. I think we should talk,” Carver said softly, still staring off at nothing.

“Will talking even help?” I asked with a sigh. I was tired, more tired than I’d ever been in my life, physically and emotionally. I was heartbroken and felt every inch of that in my bones.

We were quiet for what felt like hours before either one of us said anything. The tension filling the air was almost tangible, so thick and disturbing. It felt like neither of us thought we could swim through it to make it to each other.

“I was almost five when Ros found me,” Carver said. “Four years old and starving to death. A street gang had beaten me and stolen my clothing, holding me at gunpoint and watching me as I cried silently. When they left, I was freezing, curled in a ball, sitting on a concrete step somewhere in the slums, shaking and willing myself not to cry because I couldn’t risk losing the fluids.”

I blinked. I didn’t think I’d ever heard Carver share more than five words about himself in a row. Still, I didn’t think that him opening up to me about his past could wipe clean the vision I had of Roscora Deleviv’s hands on him.

“He put his coat around me,” Carver continued. “It was warm and smelled like him, like expensive cologne and roses. He took me in and treated me like family, gave me someplace to call home, even for a short time. He told me about his plans for the city, how the corrupt people running it dug their holes deeper and deeper every year. He told me he was going to change everything.

“He taught me a bit about politics and even more about being ruthless. It was all for the better good. He had intel that told him where ENAD’s headquarters were, so I wandered near it one day, hoping to be discovered. It took an officer four days to finally acknowledge the kid sleeping in the alley next to the cybercafé. I was recruited and the rest is history.”

When Carver spelled it out for me like that, I felt a twisting pain in my chest. Envisioning him as a young, starving boy on the streets was one vision I could’ve lived the rest of my life without.

“I wouldn’t say it’s history.” I spoke up after a minute of silence. “I don’t understand how you could maintain a…relationship with him while you were a soldier for ENAD.”