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“Run,” his mother told him, or maybe she just screamed, but he ran and he hid. While he hid, they took her away. Guardians found Knox in his hiding place, brought him home. There was a ransom call, but his father wouldn’t pay.

“We don’t negotiate,” his father said. “You can never negotiate with these people or they’ll take everything.”

And then her body, dumped on the road. A message for his father, who wouldn’t negotiate. His mother’s body mutilated by criminals. Knox didn’t know what “negotiate” meant, but he knew it was bad, bad enough his mother would never come home because of it.

Even so, Knox kept asking when she would be home.

Then the funeral under a blue sky in a part of the old city, the part they saved for the dead. They said his mother was in the long box on the stand, but that didn’t make sense. It was just a box. Why would his mom be in a box?

His father tapped at a projection. He didn’t cry. He tapped at a projection and the box burned.

Knox yelled, ran out to stop him. “My mommy’s in the box!” he yelled, but the box still burned.

He knew now, of course, that she was already dead, dead as Beatrice, dead as Egan, dead as anyone who’d ever died and there were billions of them. But then, back then, he also knew that only one death mattered and it happened in front of his eyes. He was sure he saw his father kill his mother. He was sure his father blamed him for hiding when the masked men came and blamed him for looking like his mother, for having her smile and her laugh. Her joy.

He cursed his father. A tiny child, barely able to form a sentence on his own, and he cursed his father. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe that only happened now, in the instant flash of dreaming in the firelit cave. Knox saw his own face in his father’s glasses and behind his face, the flicker of flames.

Knox looked up. Syd had closed his eyes. He was crying. He’d told Knox back in the alley that he never cried anymore, not since he’d first taken Knox’s punishments. Then, he’d cried. As little boys, they both had cried together.

And now, in the cave, Knox couldn’t help it. He felt a tear roll down his cheek and then another and another. He couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it. He wanted to throw up. His body shook; his nose ran. He sobbed, right there in the dirt, with the bandits and Marie watching him, he wept and he didn’t know why he wept and he hated himself for weeping. He saw his mother’s coffin burning, heard the echo of his own childhood cries. His first memories were of grieving.

“Enough of the histrionics,” the woman who’d killed Egan said. “Egan was a low-rent punk and a fool. He should have known better and he got what he deserved.”

Knox looked to Syd to see what he would do. Neither of them moved.

“No,” said Syd. He held his friend’s body on his lap. “No.”

The woman sighed.

“He was a bad kid, believe me,” she said. “Not worth your tears.”

“He was my friend,” said Syd, which wasn’t the opposite of being a bad kid. He was a liar and a crook, tweaked out half the time and sarcastic all of the time, but how many guys had a friend as good as he’d been? He’d done some bad, maybe would have done more if he’d lived, but he wasn’t all bad, not all the time. He was better than the bad he did, but he died just the same.

He died for Syd. Or least, because of.

“He messed up,” the woman said. “Mistakes have consequences.” She made a clicking sound with her tongue on the back of her teeth. “We needed him because you’d cooperate if he was here and he thought that meant we were on your side.”

Syd let his friend’s head rest on the ground and he stood. “You aren’t taking me to the Rebooters, I guess.”

“You guess right,” said the woman.

Syd looked down at Egan’s body and shook his head a tiny bit, side to side. It was a look of disappointment, not anger. “Figured.”

“He did say you were clever.”

“So, what now?” Syd looked back at the woman with that same bored look he had on the projection when the Guardians first came for him, like nothing could disappoint him anymore. Something had broken that he did not know how to fix.

The woman dropped two new little cartridges into her weapon, snapped it shut, and pointed it at Syd.

“This is it,” the woman said. “Just this and then we’re done. The reward for killing you where no one will find your body, and some more for bringing these two home. That’s all this is. Nothing personal, Sydney. Maybe your next life will be easier than this one.”

Syd glanced to the wall of the cave where he’d left the EMD stick lying. Knox looked at it too. The silver pole shimmered in the firelight, too far out of reach to save him.

Knox pressed his fists into the rocky ground, trying to find the strength to stand. He didn’t want to be the little boy who hid when the criminals came. He would always be the little boy who hid.

[37]

SYD SAW KNOX TENSE. If Knox dove for the weapon against the wall, the bandit might hesitate to shoot him. It might buy them enough time. He tried to signal Knox with his eyes, but Knox didn’t pick up on it. He had a faraway stare. Tear tracks streaked the dust on his cheeks. What did Knox have to cry for? When this was over, he’d get to go home.

Not Egan. Egan would never go back to that stuffy little room of his. The thought punched Syd in the throat. Egan was dead.

“You kids might want to close your eyes,” the woman suggested to Knox and Marie. “Your parents aren’t paying us to give you nightmares.”

“Father,” Knox said, hunched on the ground, starting straight into the fire. Everyone looked his way.

“What?” the woman grunted.

“Not parents,” Knox answered her. “It’s just my dad and me.”

Why did that matter now? Why did Knox feel like that mattered?

“Whatever, kid.” The woman shrugged.

“You can’t do this,” said Marie. “Syd could change the world. He can’t die in a cave. He can’t die like this.”

“Shut that girl up,” the bandit with the sword sneered.

“Please, don’t do this,” Marie begged the woman. She knelt at the woman’s feet. “Think of all the people he could help.”

“Get off your knees,” the woman said. “It’s just a fairy tale. That kid can’t do anything.”

“If you don’t believe it, then why kill him? Why do you need to kill him if he’s no threat?” Marie stood, still in the woman’s face.

“I don’t have to believe it as long as your daddies do,” she said. “They have a lot of money riding on Syd here never making it to the Rebooters.”

“You’d kill him just for money?” Marie spat out the word “money” as if it were a curse, but Syd understood perfectly. The only people who couldn’t understand the brutal lengths others would go to for money were the people who’d never been without it.

Syd could see it dawning on Marie that it was over, that hope was lost. She had that look people get when they know they’ve bet it all on a losing proposition. In the Valve, moments like that drove people to religion or to madness or to suicide. Syd wondered what it’d do to the rich girl as she realized that a fortune would always beat a dream.

“Marie,” Syd told her. “Let it go. I’m not worth it.”

“You are,” she said. “I know you are.”

She put her body between the weapon and Syd. Her bravery mocked Knox’s cowardice. He was still on the ground in the dirt, like a worm. He hated himself for it, but he couldn’t make himself stand.

“Out of the way,” the woman commanded, but Marie didn’t move, her stillness so different from Knox’s.

“Just move her.” The bandit with the sword grabbed Marie by the hair, yanking her head to the side with a painful snap.

What hadn’t occurred to him, to any of them, was that Marie, like Knox, like all Upper City executives’ children, had had self-defense training. And unlike Knox, she had paid very close attention. She had practiced.

Her hands reached out in front of her and she grabbed the hot barrels of the woman’s weapon, jerking it down and to the side. Before Syd or Knox knew what was happening, Marie had pulled the weapon free and slammed the back of it into the bandit’s groin. Then she brought the weapon down on his head, spun the weapon around and pointed the side-by-side tubes into the woman’s face.

The injured man was doubled over in pain on the ground, cursing Marie in a gurgled torrent of profanity.

“No one move,” Marie said. She brushed her dark hair from her face and her eyes caught the firelight, flickered.

“Don’t be stupid,” the woman told her. “You’re not a killer and this is not some fairy story. Maybe you’re a princess who can’t sleep at night, but like your pals said, there’s no frog prince here. You’re in over your head with the wrong kind of people. Put the gun down, let me do my job, and we’ll get you home. You can work all this out with your daddy. Maybe he’ll buy you a horsey of your own to apologize.”

“No,” said Marie. “We’re leaving. The three of us. We’re going to the Rebooters. Knox! Tie those two guys up.”

Knox didn’t move. He was lost in his head, his eyes fixed on Egan’s body. The shadow of the dancing flames, like when his mother’s coffin burned. He couldn’t recall her face. At the moment, that seemed somehow important. The gritty earth below his knuckles crunched, cut him. The pain, that too seemed somehow important. He heard his name as if it were shouted through water.

“Knox? Are you hurt? Knox!”

“What?” He snapped to. “I’m okay. What?” He brushed his hands on his pants, looked around the cave at the aftermath of the violence. He felt like he’d been watching a holo and only now was he realizing he was in it too.

“Tie those two up,” Marie repeated.

“Tie them with what?” he asked.

“Take the reins off one of the horses outside.”

Knox pushed himself off the ground and made his way out of the cave. As he passed, the guy on the ground reached for his own weapon. Syd dove for his EMD stick and fired off a shot that left the bandit sprawled out facedown, twitching.

“Thanks,” Knox said, his voice flat, his face a total blank. He turned and walked outside to get the reins off one of the horses.

Syd stepped forward, right over the fire, sparks wicking off his shoes. He stood beside Marie and held the gleaming silver rod pointed right at the bandit who had killed his friend.

The woman’s eyes scanned him up and down. He wondered if she could read him the way he could read her. She wasn’t afraid.

She could see quite clearly that he was.

“I can stop your heart with this thing if I want,” he said, trying to sound confident. He turned up the output. “I have a lot of experience with these.”

The woman didn’t answer. Syd felt like a coward. This woman had killed Egan. She’d killed two Guardians. No doubt she’d put Egan up to killing that woman in the zoo. She was a Maes gang thug. She deserved to die. She’d earned it. It took all the strength Syd had to keep his hand from shaking. He stared at her and she pursed her lips. All he could see on her face was impatience.

Knox came back in clutching a mess of leather straps. He bent down to tie the bandits up but stopped before he got to them. He froze.

“You don’t know how to tie a knot?” Marie groaned.

“I never had to before,” he said

Syd kept his eyes locked on the woman’s.

“Well?” the woman asked. “You pulled it out, you know how to use it, big boy?”

Syd exhaled. He steadied his hand. A small smirk formed on the woman’s lips.

“Go help Knox,” Syd told Marie.

“I—” Marie hesitated.

“If you don’t help him, they’ll never get tied up and they’ll take us all hostage and kill me.”

“Fine.” Marie stepped away to help Knox tie up the men. She handed Knox the gun as she bent down to tie the knots herself. “Keep this pointed at them.”

“I’m gonna cut your pretty face off, you spit-shined slag,” the bandit who was still conscious snarled at her. Syd heard them grunt as she cinched the leather straps tight, probably cutting off blood flow to important parts of their bodies.

“I like her,” the woman said to Syd. “Your girlfriend?”

Syd didn’t answer her.

“Oh, right,” said the woman. “You don’t go for that. Maybe
you
can be
her
girlfriend.”

Syd raised the EMD stick to the level of the woman’s head.

“Stop kidding yourself, boy.” She cleared her throat and spat to the side. “You aren’t the type. Why don’t you just run out of here so we can get on to the next part.”

“What part’s that?”

“The part where we hunt you down, torture you to death, and sell your friends back to their parents piece by piece.”

Syd swallowed hard. His throat was dry.

The woman leaned forward and smiled. She whispered in his ear. “Your friend Egan didn’t want to kill that woman at the zoo, you know? We told him it was the only way to save you. So he did it. He killed for you.” She raised her eyebrows. “And you? Little Chapter Eleven coward, can’t even take your revenge. I guess we know who was the man in your relationship. Guess you’ll never bend over for Egan again.”

She laughed in his ear and the moment he flinched, she grabbed for the EMD stick in his hand.

Syd was faster.

He hardly seemed to move, but the pulse he sent through the woman made her crumble where she stood. She fell straight down in a mass of firing synapses and blasted nerves. She clawed at the dirt and vomited and Syd stood over her until she stopped moving.

He knew what he’d done. He’d stopped her heart. Dead.

A life for a life.

All debts have to be repaid.

“We’re going,” Syd said and he walked out of the cave into the cool desert air.

[38]

SYD WAS SURPRISED BY how little remorse he felt for what he’d done to that woman, lying dead in the dust. He’d always thought killing would change a person, but he didn’t feel changed. He’d just flicked his wrist. It didn’t take much to make him a killer. Just a flick of the wrist.

He heard a snuffling beside him, the loud breathing of the horses tied up by the entrance to the cave. They were just dark outlines against the starry sky. He approached one, whispering, urging it to hush.

The horse backed a few steps away but Syd raised his hand and let the horse smell him, and then he rested his palm on the horse’s long nose. It was hard and the fur was short and bristly. The horse’s giant black eyes darted from side to side. Animals know when something is wrong.