Proxy (31 page)

“I don’t see nothing belong to you,” Gordis told the men.

“We just want the proxy,” one bandit said. “The rest of you can go in peace.” He paused and scratched his chin. Then he nodded, like a new idea had struck him. “We’ll even buy the patron kids off you, if you want. A good price too.”

Gordis cocked his head to look over at Knox, Syd, and Marie. He pursed his lips, considering this new piece of information he’d been given. His eye lingered on Syd a moment longer, then he turned back to the bandits. “I don’t see any patrons here. Proxies neither.”

The bandits laughed. The surface of the grenade flashed with blinking lights, armed. “Whatever you say,” the bandit said, smiling. “But living or dead, the dark one there in the middle is ours. Payment for an outstanding debt.”

Gordis slapped his EMD stick on his palm and looked Syd up and down. Syd stiffened. His cover story hadn’t lasted ten minutes. Gordis turned back toward the bandits.

“No debts out here but what you can collect,” he said.

Knox liked the sound of that. It was something a scripted badass would say. He filed it away to reuse if he ever got in another fight, if he lived to.

“You make us collect, we’ll do it.” The bandit kept tossing his grenade from hand to hand. “We can blow this hovercraft and these kiddies of yours to vapor before you can fire off the EMD stick you got there. And as for the girl . . .” He winked at Marie. It made her skin crawl. “Her gun ain’t good for much from this distance. And she won’t shoot it anyway. You took on some bad passengers, friend. Just turn ’em over and go on your way.”

“Maes gang won’t let you live. They don’t negotiate,” Syd whispered to Gordis, his voice jangling with nerves. Knox flinched. He knew what happened to people who didn’t negotiate. Syd couldn’t read Gordis’s face, didn’t know if he was tempted by their offer.

“Listen, friend,” said the other one. The sun glared off his rocket launcher, forcing Knox to squint. “It’s hot out here on this road and we’ve been riding hard. I know you’ve seen those drones flying over and trouble’s coming with ’em close behind. So why don’t we make this easy? You kill that boy there, right now. You just turn your little stick on him and make him dead, and then we’ll take the body on our horses and ride away. It ain’t much to do. One dead swampcat to save all these lives. You won’t find a better deal.”

“So they
do
negotiate,” Gordis said.

“Hey, kid!” The one with the grenade spoke to Syd. “You really gonna let all your friends die for you? All these little kids? Egan wasn’t enough? You gonna kill everyone just to hang on to that precious life of yours? What’s so great you gotta live for?”

“Maybe he ain’t got laid yet,” the other bandit suggested and laughed a wheezy laugh.

Syd looked to Gordis and to the line of children braced for a hopeless fight. He looked to Knox and Marie. They were ready to fight for him too, each for their own reasons, but the reasons didn’t matter. The willingness was all.

Syd had never been willing to die for anyone. He’d spent his whole life up to now being punished for other people—well, one other person—and he spent the whole time wanting to be free of it. No more connections, no more debts. But here he was, free as he’d ever been, and he had more debts than ever: Beatrice, Baram, Egan . . . he owed them all. They deserved better than this.

He knew he should do the noble thing here and step up, let them kill him so the kids didn’t have to die, so Marie and Knox could survive, get back to their lives, maybe use their wealth and power to make the system a little better from within. His life wasn’t worth more than theirs; it couldn’t be, no matter what Marie believed about him. If he didn’t want their blood on his hands, he had to give himself up. One life for all these other lives. Such an obvious deal to make.

But his feet stayed firmly planted on the pavement.

It’s not easy to throw your life away, even for a good reason, even when it’s the right thing to do. It was simple enough. Debt or no: Syd did not want to die.

Nobody moved.

Marie held her weapon and Gordis his EMD stick. Syd’s stick had been lost in the flash flood, and he stood beside Knox with his fists clenched. Knox did the same. He felt stupid, but he did it anyway. He’d imagined being in a battle before, of course. All boys did at some point, right? But he hadn’t imagined it would be like this, surrounded by kids, standing beside his proxy and worrying about looking stupid.

The man with the grenade shrugged. He turned to the other one. “Looks like they’re the ones that don’t negotiate.”

The other one spat on the ground. It hit the dust with a splat and a sizzle. “Then we gotta kill ’em all.”

“We still get paid if the rich ones die?”

“Guess we’ll find out.”

[44]

BEFORE ANOTHER WORD COULD be spoken, the bandit threw his grenade straight at Syd.

It landed on the dirt in front of him and rolled at his feet.

At the same time, the other bandit fired his rocket launcher at the hovercraft. It whistled across the short distance in a flash.

Knox and Marie both turned, without hesitation, and dove on top of Syd, knocking him down. The impact tore the breath out of him and sent a stabbing pain through his ribs. The weight of two bodies pressed over him, blotting out the sky.

Knox and Marie slammed their eyes shut tight, and wrapped their arms around each other, just in time to go together into oblivion.

Except they didn’t.

No explosions followed.

The rocket hit the hovercraft with a metallic clunk and bounced harmlessly off the hull. Knox and Marie opened their eyes. Syd looked up at Gordis, who stood exactly where he’d been, feet planted firmly on the cracked hardpan of the desert, the explosive ball touching the tip of his toe. Knox was surprised to see that Gordis wore sandals. It was a strange detail to capture his attention, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the metal ball and the man’s big toe.

Gordis kicked the grenade lightly to the side.

“What the—?” the bandit began.

Gordis smirked. “Variable-frequency signal jammer,” he said, and with a wave of his hand, he fired off an EMD pulse at the men on horseback.

Actually, Syd, realized, at their horses.

The animals flailed and shrieked, bucking their riders as they fell to the ground in convulsions.

Gordis strolled up to them, casual as could be, and he gave them each a fatal tap with his EMD stick, frying every nerve in their bodies and watching calmly until the shaking stopped. He bent down and snapped each of their necks for good measure, then he nodded at the kids, who rushed to slice the meat from the horses.

And, to Syd’s horror, from the men.

“No wasting foodstuff out here,” Gordis said.

Marie looked over to Knox. She had one hand clutching her weapon. The other was wrapped around his shoulder. He had an arm around her waist. Knox looked back at her with just a little twitch of the lips. Her head tilted slightly. Knox’s moved forward.

“I hate to interrupt.” Syd winced beneath them. “But can you get off me, please?”

They looked down at him, as if they were startled to see him there. Marie blushed and rolled off him. Knox watched her stand, using the weapon to help herself up.

He smirked at Syd and gave him a mischievous wink. “Progress,” he whispered and heaved himself off the ground.

It was undeniable, Knox had confidence. A twisted mind, laser focused on one totally inappropriate thing, but still, it was impressive. Even in the face of death, Knox had making out on the brain. He bent down and helped Syd off the ground, letting him lean his weight on him once more.

“They didn’t even get a shot off,” Knox announced, excitement and pride buoying his voice, like the brief but conclusive battle was something from a holo game. Adrenaline coursed through him; his whole body tingled in a way that petty vandalism or high-speed driving could never create. He was frightened and horrified and yet, somehow, thrilled. He felt more alive than he ever had before. “A signal jammer! Did you see that?”

“I saw,” said Syd, watching Gordis oversee the picking apart of the bandits. He wondered who the man really was. No simple scavenger should be so cool in the face of battle, not without training. And what scavenger fleeing Mercy Camp just happens to have a variable-frequency signal jammer? Syd had been fixing stuff for security contractors since puberty and he’d only ever seen one in Mr. Baram’s shop in all that time. They were rare and expensive technology.

Gordis was more than he seemed.

Of course, thought Syd, so are we.

Gordis came over to Syd and Knox and Marie. He rested his EMD stick over his shoulder.

“You two.” He looked Knox and Marie up and down. “Patrons? Upper City?”

They nodded.

“And you?” He turned to Syd.

“Just what I look like I am.”

The man smiled. “Then you the only man on earth that’s true for.”

“You okay?” Knox asked Syd. “You’re kinda gray.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Syd, but he knew he wasn’t. The adrenaline of the fight was gone, the urgent focus of being chased had vanished, and what was left was only pain. His ribs ached, his head throbbed, and he felt light on his feet. He listed to one side and Knox barely caught him, his strong grip squeezing out a bolt of agony, even as he kept Syd from collapsing on the road.

“Take this.” Gordis held out a biopatch. It didn’t look like a scavenger’s hacked meds, but like something from the Upper City, something lux. Gordis didn’t wait for Syd to answer, just slapped it onto his skin, where it lit up gold and silver and green, then faded and dissolved. It seemed to take the pain with it. A wave of peace rolled up from Syd’s toes to the tip of his head. He wanted to sleep. More than anything, he wanted to sleep, but first, he had to find out about Gordis. He had to know.

“What about you?” he asked. “Who are you?”

“Just rest,” urged Gordis. “Bring him on board,” he told Knox.

“No!” Syd objected. He held himself up. He studied Gordis. His arms were thick and strong and he looked well fed. To be well fed as a scavenger was no easy task, and nobody living out in the wastelands pulled it off. They usually arrived in the Mountain City half dead, thin as reeds, and host to a thousand parasitic diseases. Other than the scar on his face, Gordis looked healthy.

“You’re a recruiter,” Syd suggested. Gordis had to lean in to hear him. Syd could feel the patch taking over. He was fading. “For the Rebooters . . .”

Gordis sucked his teeth; he didn’t deny it.

“We need to get to the Rebooters,” Marie added eagerly.

Gordis nodded.

“These kids,” Syd added. “Your recruits?”

“Very impressive, Sydney,” Gordis replied.

“I . . .” Syd’s vision blurred. He tried to make eye contact with Gordis. “I never told you my name.”

“You didn’t have to.” Gordis reached into his shirt and pulled out a chain. There was a small metal plate on the end of it. He held it up to show Syd. Knox and Marie leaned in to see it too.

The plate was stamped with symbols. Although his vision had begun to blur and his thoughts become foggy, Syd recognized them immediately.

They were the same ones behind his ear.

“I always knew you’d come back,” said Gordis. “I always believed.”

“Yovel,” said Syd, before his legs gave out. Knox scooped him up and carried him into the hovercraft.

“Sydney gonna be okay,” Gordis told him as they set him inside on top of some crates.

“Syd,” Knox corrected him. “He goes by Syd.”

Gordis nodded. “They’ll fix Syd up in Old Detroit, all better. You’ll see.”

All better, thought Knox. That didn’t seem possible.

When he closed his eyes, he saw Gordis touching each of those riders with his EMD stick, dropping them dead on the road. He saw the woman in the cave, the moment Syd killed her. He saw Egan’s chest exploding and he saw the Guardians in the doorway from the zoo and the woman bleeding out on the floor. He saw Beatrice, hanging like unprocessed meat on a hook. The branding on Syd’s arm, the scars. He doubted anything would ever be all better for Syd. The most he could hope for was to survival. It was the most anyone could hope for out here and even for that, the chances seemed slim.

[45]

THE HOVERCRAFT WHINED AND rattled as it tore through the evening and into the night.

Syd slept fitfully, wrapped in a silver emergency blanket on some crates behind the pilot’s seat. Gordis drove with four holo projections in front of him, showing engine readouts, ground topography, power levels, and the drones prowling in the sky above.

The interior was lit with only dim red running lights, to avoid detection, but given the speed and focus Gordis brought to bear, Knox sensed they’d been spotted and were in a race to Old Detroit. He tried to picture his father in his office, looking down at the hovercraft, debating whether or not to blow up his son to make sure Syd was killed. The hovercraft wasn’t trying to outrun the drones. It was trying to outrun Knox’s history and his father’s calculus—how much was his son worth, when did the bad of Knox’s life outweigh the good? Had it ever?

The wind howled through the hole in the roof of the vehicle where the bandits had blasted off the turret. Cold air frosted the metal and the children huddled together, crammed into every open space inside. The ones who’d stayed awake watched Knox and Marie intently, curious how patrons sat and talked and moved and coughed. They’d never seen the rich before.

Knox and Marie shared a stinking patchwork quilt that the children had given them. Knox marveled at how many different kinds of itchy fabric could exist in the world and how they had all come to be a part of this one quilt. He was pretty sure it was giving him a rash. He wished Gordis had offered him a patch like he’d given Syd. He had pain too. He needed sleep.

“You asleep?” Marie asked.

“Nope,” said Knox.

Marie shifted, tried to get comfortable, but a metal rivet was digging into her back. There was no getting comfortable in this hovercraft. It was not how she was accustomed to travel. She admired how peacefully the little kids could sleep, in spite of the discomfort. In spite of the danger and the horrors of the day. No one sleeps like little kids, she figured. The thought made her miss her father, made her think about what she was giving up to follow her cause to the end.