The Superiors (28 page)

“We need a brave man like you, someone who will face Ander even if the chance of surviving the encounter is chancy at best. I think you’re the man for the job.”

“You’re sending me on a suicide mission?” Draven thought of his mundane life, the life he sometimes loathed. And he thought of the stack of anyas in the tin in his apartment, the money he thought would change his life. He’d had the good fortune to catch three saps, as well as bringing Cali in. The money added up quickly.

“Not sending you,” Byron said. “We’re only offering you a chance to do good for your nation. That’s what soldiers do.”

“And let me ask you this, man to man. What is my nation going to do for me?”

“Ah, you’re smarter than I thought,” Byron said, laughing. “Your nation is going to pay you handsomely if you succeed in your mission.”

“Define success.”

Byron laughed again, sipping his beverage and smiling over the rim at Draven. The smarter man seemed delighted at the glimpse of intellect in his underling. Draven knew he was no intellectual match for Byron, and he enjoyed his advantage for a moment. No one had ever accused him of being too clever.

“Success means that you assist in the capture or slaying of the man Ander. You will be paid even if we don’t succeed in capturing him, if he slips away again. You will receive five hundred anyas for your service.”

Draven tried not to show his shock but he could tell by the Enforcer’s amused expression that he had let it slip. Draven made that much in a year, and used most of it for necessities. “And if I am killed?”

Byron shrugged. “Then you will be killed. But if we catch the man, you will receive a thousand anyas for your part in the capture, if you are active in the struggle.”

“You—said—you said five hundred,” Draven said, trying to calculate how much more he needed to buy Cali. Compared with his life, even a thousand anyas was slim. But if he lived…

“Five hundred if you take the assignment and fail.”

“Five hundred anyas, even if Ander escapes.”

“Yes. And you wouldn’t be going in alone. You’re the best man for the job, not only for your instinct in these situations, but also your disregard for your own safety. You’re also qualified because you know Ander’s smell. You’ve followed the man before, you know what he is capable of, that he’s slippery and deceptive and hard to catch. You know he’s strong, and dangerous, and vicious. And you tracked him anyway.”

“And I’m strong, and smart, and strategic, and I know how the man thinks. And I’m willing to make sacrifices for my country, the way all Superiors should be. The man must be taken down. He’s killed several men. He’s leaving a trail of dead for us to follow.”

“And you’d risk your own life for the mission?”

“Yes. I find the kinds of things he does repulsive to my very nature. And I owe him personally for the harm he did me. I still have scars to show for his bites. I would be only too happy to rip his head from his shoulders.” The threat sounded strange coming from the mouth of this respectable gentleman.

“So you and I would take this journey. Anyone else?”

“No. Just the two of us. We’ll have time to become even better friends I’m sure. I respect you immensely and I hope the feeling is mutual. And I know you could use the funds. You can take a few days to consider if it’s worth the risk. Just think about it.”

Draven was already thinking. Five hundred anyas, plus what he had saved would be just enough to buy a healthy female sap of breeding age. A thousand…that would be enough for him to get a place with an extra room, perhaps even facilities for a human. He wouldn’t have to keep Cali in his small place, and she wouldn’t have to live in discomfort until he could afford better housing.

Draven finished the sap in one long draught and put the glass on the desk. “I don’t have to think about it, sir. I accept the assignment. When do we leave?”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Ander sat on the hood of his car and wiped the bloody dagger on his pants. Wasn’t the first time he’d killed for food, wouldn’t be the last. Once a friend had said killing for food was primitive, that Superiors had evolved beyond such things and that’s why something called murder rate didn’t exist anymore. Ander didn’t know about all that. Killing for food seemed as good a reason as any. He’d killed hundreds of men in the War, and for no good reason at all. Just because someone pointed him in that direction and said, “Shoot.”

Ander had shot.

He figured killing wasn’t a big deal so people just didn’t think of it. Besides, it took a lot of finesse to kill a Superior, even for another Superior. Killing a Superior was a complicated operation requiring proper materials, specific procedures, and deadly accurate aim. Har-har, deadly. Ander smiled and pushed the dagger back into his boot. He had a better one. The longer one, a short-sword really, he used when he had time to plan. He hadn’t counted on the sap farmer coming out and checking out the source of the commotion, not during the day. But there he’d come, and Ander hadn’t had much choice. He had to kill or get arrested.

He knew well enough where people like him ended up—on trial. That was all moonbeams and roses for those lucky enough to have been born with good looks or good manners. Neither of which Ander had in the least. He didn’t much care for those qualities—useless in the run of things. Still, looking and speaking and coming across a certain way, that’s all that really mattered in a trial. Oh, yes, Master Superior, I’m so innocent and contrite. Bullshit, all of it. If you’re so contrite, then why’d you do it? That’s what Ander had wanted to know when he’d sat in on a case once. He hadn’t been asked to judge again.

Ander had no illusions about his demeanor. It came in handy in his line of work. But at a government trial—not likely. He looked scary, just like the sort of man that he was. He looked like a tough guy, a guy who might run a restaurant that let sickos and creeps indulge their perversions for a fee. He looked smart and cunning and all the other things that didn’t help out in a court of law. No, in court it behooved one to look uncertain and attractive and effeminate, to be small and soft spoken and of course to look very, very contrite. Always the damn contrition.

Ander didn’t give two shits about contrition, his or anyone else’s. Why should he be sorry? He only met demand with supply. That’s what a good businessman did. The government ought to just line up all the perps and put them in front of a firing squad, the way they had during the War with captured enemy troops. After all, if every man who got off on molesting bloodbags was off the streets, Ander wouldn’t need to run that business out the back of his restaurants.

With all the human-rights activists crying equality, you’d think they’d take his side. But he just couldn’t win. The activists wanted humans to have rights like Superiors, but they sure didn’t want them to have to work like Superiors. Seemed like half the Third Order women were prostitutes, so why shouldn’t sap women have the same job? That would be true equality. But saps weren’t equal, never would be.

Saps were great for food, though, and maybe an easy fuck. They made great whores. They were expendable. And renewable, for that matter. They had babies faster than you could think up a name for the last one.

Ander got in the stolen car and checked on Nina. She didn’t look so hot anymore. In fact, he was pretty sure she was dying. Might as well have one last go-round before she hit the switch. He circled around Houston and drove out on the lumpy track that had been a road during the War. Ander had been up there a bit, seen some action in the area. Texas lay just north of there, where he’d been captured once and almost put to the firing squad. Good thing he’d been as unscrupulous then as he was now.

He’d gotten away with his life that time, although he couldn’t say the same for his captors. He’d killed a handful of them, plus a few of his own comrades too. Each man for himself, Ander thought. Superiors could talk all night long about community and togetherness and cohesiveness and all that shit. Didn’t make one bit of difference in the end. They just didn’t want to admit they still had the same petty jealousies and animal natures as sapiens. Each and every Superior, just like every human, only wanted one thing—to come first, to eat first, to win, to live. That’s all it came down to.

Ander drove out into the desert and had his entertainment from Nina, who didn’t look as entertained as usual. Ander had forgotten her medications, and she hadn’t been the same without them. Plus, she was just a sap, so of course she’d gotten attached to her drugs like any weak and mutable thing would. Now she depended on them, and without them she just sweated and stank and moaned a whole lot, and puked in his car and out the window and anywhere else she could find to puke.

He’d gotten pretty sick of her anyway, and he wasn’t about to carry her around with him in the desert. She put up a good fight, let out some good banshee shrieks while he drained the life out of her. But he didn’t figure he’d eat much for a while, so why not get what he could? She’d die out there in a few days and all that sap would go to waste. So he drained her dry as a snakeskin and left her in the car. Let those damn lawmen deal with the remains.

Those Enforcers, they all wanted to cry mercy on the saps, but every last one of them had sapiens, and he’d be willing to bet they weren’t all moral and high-handed dealing with their own bloodbags. Probably half—no, pretty near all of them—had dallied in illicit behavior with their own livestock. It wasn’t regulated. No one could prove a crime unless a sap died, and it was easy enough to keep them alive even if mistakes were made and they lost a limb or two in the process. Besides, everyone had to be curious now and then, wondering if it would be different from how they remembered. And an Enforcer could cover anything up. They were the law—how could they do anything against the law? The idea itself was circuitous.

“Goodbye, teeny Nina,” Ander said, slamming the car door down. It caught on her foot and made a satisfying crunching sound, like a dog chewing up a bone. Ander opened the door and stuffed the mangled, dangling foot back in and closed the door again. Then he set off. His spirits ran high—energy charged through him and he’d stuffed himself to the gills with blood. No better way to start the night. And ahead of him to the north lay Texas, where he’d heard of a funny little man who could supply him with the necessary documents to end his life as Ander and begin his new life as someone else.

People gravitated towards others of their own kind, and Ander had never had any trouble finding connections he needed in his illegal affairs. He’d heard of this guy who supplied papers to down-and-out Thirds who had lost or sold their papers. What a great way to run black-market ID papers. Put the face of charity on it.

So the guy ran a charity to cleverly disguise his other operation—the one where for a fee you could become whoever you wanted. A criminal could become one of the obedient masses. A man could become a woman, or a woman a man. A Third could become a Second, for a very large sum. And a Second could stay a Second, for that same very large sum. Ander didn’t know the exact sum, but he didn’t worry. He had a lot. It would be enough. He’d done it before, years ago. Now things were more tightly regulated, papers harder to counterfeit, and more papers required. But he didn’t see a significant obstacle. Ander might not look like the kind of man who could convince a panel of North American judges, but he looked like the kind who could convince another man like himself.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Much planning went into the mission to catch Ander, and several weeks passed while the men completed preparations for the journey. The night before setting out, Draven left work with a promise his job would wait for him if he returned alive. He had the night off, and he did what he could to prepare. He’d worked out for the weeks since his injury, and he had regained his strength and then some.

He’d grown more agile, too. He did yoga with Hyoki, and she taught him a little Judo. He’d become more flexible and faster, something he would need on his journey. He had always been quick, even for a Superior. It was one of the only natural advantages he had been given.

The last night in the city, Draven did his exercise routine, and when he had finished with this, he packed a few things—jeans, an extra pair of linen pants, underwear, a few t-shirts, a light canvas jacket. He wanted a light pack. He added a tent and a few dozen packets of dried sap and a thin mat for sleeping. Ander remained in the wilderness, close to the outskirts of Houston, where he visited to feed on the livestock of others.

When Draven had done all he could to prepare for his journey, he still had hours left before sleep. He tried to read but his mind strayed. He paced in the cramped apartment, then pocketed his cards and an anya and went out into the night.

He could take the Mert, but he liked the coolness of the night, the gusty wind and the wet air on his face. Rain had fallen during the day, and the night smelled of rain and wet asphalt. The wind had taken the steam off the ground and a chill had crept into the air. Draven wanted to test himself, make sure one more time he was up for the task in front of him, that he could perform the duties required of him when the time came.

He set off at a sprint towards the edge of the city, the air streaking past him like cool ribbons spooling out in the night behind him. His skin burned with a pleasant chill as he moved through the night, not slowing until he came to the Confinement at the edge of the city. He felt more energetic than before he’d started, and the knowledge of his strength and stamina pleased him.

He entered, bright eyed and in high spirits from his newfound strength. He punched Cali’s number into the pad the door guard held out to him. He looked at the man sharply. “Where is this sap?”