The Society (A Broken World Book 1) (13 page)

Brennan came in partway through the process and reported that the foundry was a complete mess, and more than a dozen workers had received burns of some kind or another, but nobody had died. I half expected to end up down in the pipe room until well past when my shift was supposed to end, but Brennan gathered up his guards and waved for me to follow him as the people from the other shift arrived.

I waved goodbye to Beth and Billy, and then followed Brennan and the others up the tunnels. For a second I thought maybe he'd changed his mind about making me a guard—we seemed to be headed back to the worker dorms—but rather than going in through the main door like I'd been expecting, Brennan took a left and entered through another door, one that led underground.

There were no elevators, and we only went down four flights of stairs, but the similarities between Brennan's headquarters and the administration back home weren't lost on me. All other things being equal, most people would have picked the top floor of the new building for their command center just so that they could enjoy the view.

The basement wasn't any safer than the roof when it came to danger from the other warlords and gang leaders in the city—Brennan wasn't worried about them, he was worried about attack from the Society. It was one more sign that he was up to something that he shouldn't be.

The guards all started peeling off into different rooms as we started down the hall—all except for the big guy who'd shadowed Brennan the whole time we'd been inside of the pipe room.

"Jax, you've been on your feet for more than twelve hours and I know that you've got paperwork waiting for you back in your room. I'm fine here—if Skye wanted to hurt me she wouldn't have saved me from the bruiser earlier."

"Sir, with all due respect—"

"That's an order, Jax. In light of today's events, tomorrow's meeting is even more critical than we expected it to be. I need you at full strength while we're out there."

The guard—Jax—didn't look happy about the order, but he nodded and turned left when we turned right. Half a dozen steps later we stopped in front of a door and Brennan pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked it. I wasn't sure what to expect as I followed him inside, but based on the tidy bunks from the worker dorms I knew it was at least going to be a step up from what the rest of the city's inhabitants were making do with.

It was nothing like what the franchised citizens back home had enjoyed, but it was surprisingly big. There was a hammock hanging from two oversized hooks in the ceiling, a variety of metal bookcases along the wall, and a shiny steel dresser not too far from the hammock.

"The bathroom is just through that door. Given that we've got all of the water pipes circulating at maximum speed, there's plenty of hot water to go around, but even when that's not the case, this floor still gets first dibs on the pipes."

I nodded slowly, still taking in my surroundings. There were weapons on the shelves, a variety of knives, a rifle and a handgun. It looked like there were boxes of ammunition there next to the firearms too.

Brennan followed my gaze and shrugged. "Sorry about that. Jax's orders—although he's probably regretting it right now. Everyone on this level is to keep an extra set of weapons in their rooms at all times. He's worried that two or more of the territories on our borders will end up combining against us and we'll have to fight our way out from down here. Being in charge isn't as much fun as you might think. We've also got rules about eating in our rooms. We've got a separate cafeteria down here so that we can keep a closer eye on the food from a safety standpoint, but you'll still be eating in a big room with everyone else."

"I understand. You're worried about rats and cockroaches—it makes sense."

My eyes continued to dart around the room, but I wasn't finding any kind of proof one way or the other as far as whether this was Brennan's room. It didn't look posh enough to belong to the owner of an entire sector of the city, but on the other hand it was much too big to be assigned to a junior guard. Not only that, there was also the fact that Brennan had been carrying the key to it around in his pocket. It strained belief to think that he did that for all of the empty rooms on this level.

Up until then, I'd been operating under the assumption that he'd actually meant it when he'd said that he wanted me to be one of his guards. If that wasn't the case, if he'd brought me here for something else, I was going to break both his arms, torture him until he told me where his prototype generator was being stored, and then kill him without feeling the slightest bit sorry about it.

Brennan looked around the room one last time and then pointed to the bookcase containing all of the guns. "Your key is over there on the third shelf. I know you've had a rough day, but I need you to come with me tomorrow. I'm meeting with Piter and he never lets me bring as many guards as I'd like. Given the fact that I'm not going to be able to make the deadline on my next shipment of rifles, things are likely to get testy."

"I don't understand. If you're going to be limited as to how many guards you can bring, wouldn't you want to bring someone with more training than me?"

For the first time I could remember, Brennan looked embarrassed. "Actually, that was the other thing I needed to talk to you about. I'd like to slip you into the group in such a way that he doesn't think you're a real guard."

I could feel my blood pressure skyrocket, but he held up his hands before I could say anything. "It's not like that. You'll dress in the same uniform as the rest of the guards, I just want you to talk to Jax about things you could do to make yourself look like you're not really what I'm trying to present you as."

"So this job, this promotion, is contingent on draping myself over you like some kind of—"

"Not at all. Look, I was serious about needing more guards, and the quickest way to get knifed is to get involved with the people who are supposed to be watching your back. Sneaking a guard into a meeting like this dressed up as a prostitute has been done to death, but I don't think that Piter will suspect anything if we come at it from the other direction. He'll see someone who's not competent pretending to be competent and never realize that there's a whole additional layer to the disguise."

I was silent for long enough that Brennan started edging towards the door. "If you're not comfortable you don't have to do it. In fact, it's probably best if you sleep on it. I wouldn't want—"

I cut him off, worried he was going to retract the offer to be part of his guards.

"I'll do it, but you should be aware that I was in Piter's territory before I slipped into yours. I wasn't there very long—I don't think any of his people will recognize me, but you should know it's a possibility."

"How long exactly were you in there?"

This was where things had the potential to get sticky. "About six hours. Through sheer dumb luck I managed to slip across the border a bit before the attack happened. I figured that it was going to take me weeks to get through his northern border, but then the bombing happened and I saw a chance to slip through an opening in all of the confusion."

Brennan considered my answer for several seconds, and the whole time he was silent I was worried that he was thinking about the guard I'd knocked unconscious when I'd crossed over into his territory. There was no avoiding the timing being so close—not given that I had no idea how most people slipped across the border.

"Okay. Like you say, there's a risk, but it's not an insurmountable one. I'll have someone come by with some clothes and other things to make sure that you don't look like the girl who passed through Piter's territory earlier this week. You're going to want to get to sleep right away—the knock on your door is going to come awfully early tomorrow."

After Brennan was gone, I locked the deadbolt and took a quick shower. As I went to bed all I could think about was that it would have been a lot easier to make sure Piter didn't recognize me if I hadn't used both of my faces while crossing his territory—that and if I could trust Brennan with the fact that I was a nanite-infused spy from the other side of the barrier, one who was supposed to destroy everything he'd spent the last several years working towards.

Chapter 11

The knock on the door that Brennan had warned me about came even earlier than I'd been worried it might. It turned out that was because it was Jax knocking and the last thing he had on his mind was clothes.

"Brennan told me he wants to take you into the meeting with Piter tomorrow."

"Yeah, that's what he said."

Jax frowned. "I told him that nobody goes with us who isn't a known quantity. I told him that I haven't seen you fight, don't know if you know how to use a rifle, none of that."

"What did he say to that?"

"That I'd better get up early enough to evaluate you."

I yawned and shrugged. "I guess you took him at his word."

"Brennan doesn't joke around—not about security. Put on some shoes, grab one of those rifles, and let's get moving. There's a range on the level below this one. We're starting with weapons training because I don't want you putting a round in my back by accident."

I grabbed a rifle—the magazines were already loaded, so I didn't have to act like I wasn't sure which bullets went with which gun—and less than five minutes later we were inside the firing range and Jax was running me through the basics of gun handling and safety.

I nodded in all of the right places, asked a couple of basic questions so that it wouldn't be obvious that I'd heard almost the exact same speech weeks ago when I'd been tapped to start training for this mission, and then took my spot on the firing line.

"Don't try to anticipate the shot, Skye. Just put the sights on the place you want to hit and start squeezing the trigger. When it actually goes off you want it to be a surprise."

I put several rounds downrange, being careful to put them all on the paper, but not group them too close together. After the first couple of shots I pretended to develop a flinch—just a mild one—and then let Jax train me out of it. Twenty minutes later Jax was satisfied that I knew which end of the gun was the dangerous one.

He took the rifle from me and looked over at the training pads and weights that took up most of the rest of the level.

"You hurt your hand yesterday?"

In reality, my nanites had completely repaired the broken bones while I'd been sleeping, but I'd been careful to favor my right hand ever since I'd opened the door to my room.

"It's just a sprain—nothing that won't be fine in another few days, but I'm trying to keep from making it worse before then."

"I guess we'll have to skip the hand-to-hand for now then. The fact that you took down Jerome yesterday speaks well to your capabilities in that area—that will just have to be enough for now."

"Does that mean I'm in?"

"For this meeting, yes. Whether you stay in the guard or not will depend on how good you are once your hand is all healed up, and how much progress you make after that."

"You seem awful sure of that considering that Brennan has the final say…"

Jax casually chambered a round into the rifle and snugged the stock up against his shoulder without actually pointing it at me.

"There's one thing that you and I had better get clear from the start. Brennan is the boss, but he's not an idiot, and I didn't get this job because I hit harder than the other guys. If I decide that you're out, then you're out. It might take a day or two for Brennan to come around to my way of thinking, but eventually he will. I'm going to be watching you like a hawk. Make sure that you don't do anything to make me regret letting you onto my team—even temporarily."

The weapons training I'd received from the Society military had been rudimentary simply because nobody had expected me to end up using a firearm since they were so scarce on this side of the barrier. I'd received a bit more training when it came to knives and other improvised weaponry, but none of that had received anywhere near the concentration that my basic hand-to-hand skills had.

Jax had an advantage because he was the one with the rifle, but he was standing too close to me. Not only that, he still thought that my right hand was the next best thing to useless. I'd never seen Jax fight, but I was reasonably confident that I could close the distance between us and take him down before he could get a shot off.

The fact that I was superhumanly fast and currently had the drop on Jax didn't mean he wasn't dangerous though. Part of me wanted to take him out right now just so that I wouldn't have to worry about him catching me in a lie later on. Jax was going to be a constant threat during my time inside of the compound, but eliminating him now would leave too many things to chance.

I was fairly certain that the generator was in the level below the firing range—assuming that there was another floor below us—but I hadn't confirmed that yet, and even if I was right, who knew what kind of security measures would have to be bypassed in order to get to it. No, I was going to have to leave Jax in play and just hope that I would be able to outsmart him for however long it took me to get a bead on the generator.

"I read you loud and clear, sir. I won't give you any problems."

"Good. Brennan briefed me on your cover. Don't go overboard on the physical contact, but make sure that you're always the one closest to him. Grip your weapon like you're not entirely comfortable with it, but keep it pointed at the ground. A real guard would be responsible for part of the three hundred and sixty degrees of space around us, but if I see you lift your rifle without a valid threat, you're going to be sorry once we get back here to the compound."

"Yes, sir."

"Good, get back upstairs and put on your uniform—you've got about ten minutes before Lexis will be arriving."

**

Jax turned out to be wrong. Lexis showed up less than five minutes after I got back to my room. In a move completely at odds with my normal habit, I'd forgotten to lock my door, and she burst into my room like a tornado of clothes-toting energy.