The Wraith's Story (BRIGAND Book 1) (4 page)

With the map of the city firmly stenciled into my short term memory, I used my corneal implants to display a holographic overlay of the streets, so I could follow the glowing path that would lead me to one of the cargo downlifts, to the Wards. Then to Cutter. To safety.

I had learned enough about Lift Cities to understand the mechanics. It was a simple task to slip into one of the hundreds of empty cargo tubs that continually fed the maw of the downlift. Most of the system was automated and security was nearly non-existent. After all, who would want to sneak down
to
the Wards?

Fortunately, downlifts are pressurized. Unfortunately, they aren't climate controlled. Even at a thousand meters per second, I spent ten hours alternating between freezing and roasting as my cargo tub fell through the long shadows of the Lift's outer superstructure.

Despite being naked and alone in the underbelly of the city, I was confident in my abilities. But I was unprepared for the air. As I slipped out of the cargo terminal, I choked on a gritty stink that coated the insides of my mouth. A gray haze drifted around me like steam, making me hack and spit as I hurried through the dark.

I passed few lights. The darkness easily concealed me. As I worked my way down from the ingress platform, I looked out at the city before me. It was a seemingly endless vista coated in dust and grime. Boxy, utilitarian buildings, some of them huge, most only a few stories tall, hunched in the gray air. Narrow streets seemed to be literally packed with human forms. They moved slowly, forming sluggish brown rivers of humanity.

The air pressed heavy on my skin and I labored to breathe normally. My lungs were accustomed to treated, filtered air, not this. I wondered if this was the kind of place Wraiths were commissioned to. Maybe it wouldn't be so interesting after all to meet the people — to taste the food. My stomach lurched. I could barely keep my last ration of protein cubes down.

I worried briefly about being noticed. A naked girl couldn't simply stroll down these crowded streets. Could she? But then I noticed I wasn't the only one. There were children everywhere with barely more clothing than I possessed. They were filthy, scabby, and blank-eyed and nobody seemed to pay any attention to them.

A fine dust settled over everything. It formed drifts in corners. It puffed under every footstep, creating a perpetual ground fog of dirt. Everyone and everything was filthy. It took me only seconds to spit into my hands, moisten my face and body, and then rub myself with the grit. To my surprise it actually felt pleasant as my hands passed over my skin. The sensation reminded me of the powder we used on our feet in ballet. Except that smelled like lavender. The dominant scent here was more like benzene.

Freedom pulled me through the maze of streets, and the constant sensation of dust ground against my bare feet. I wormed through the throng for almost an hour, lost, quite literally, in the crowd. The map registry confirmed I had less than two kilometers to go to the rendezvous with Cutter. The Wraith. The one who would help me.

But as I passed the narrow mouth of an alley, a massive hand grabbed my arm. A hulking, beastly figure with a flattened face and disfigured mouth gargled at me, "Hiya, little sweet. You look older than most of them little scuts. Nice…" Saliva glinted on his crooked lower lip. His stare locked on my bare chest and in that second I felt completely vulnerable.

I gasped and wrenched my arm free. Adrenaline kept me running through street after street, blocks at a time. The crowd became denser. There were people everywhere. But these creatures didn't look like the people I knew. These people were misshapen, dirty, broken. Some had robotic limbs, and others simply had bits missing.

Hands, fingers and voices reached out, plucking at my naked body. Something pressed against my lower back and then slid down between my buttocks. An anonymous grip tightened on my shoulder while something pinched hard on my left nipple. Too frightened to scream, but unable to turn back, I started to panic. My eyes searched for pockets, but fear hid them from me.

My disguise was failing. I had no idea what they would do to me, but instinct told me the details wouldn't matter. A crowd began to form. Asking… touching… Exposed and trembling, I froze. But then I noticed something in my corneal display. There was another network under my feet. Access tunnels, the city beneath the city.

I crouched and twisted, bolting through the bodies that surrounded me. Before any of them could react, I lifted a panel, crawled through a small opening and fell into the warm, stinking belly of the city.

The smell down there was so much worse than the air above that I gagged and threw up all over my feet. I couldn't know if they would pursue me, but I knew for certain that I needed to keep moving. I covered my mouth, took shallow breaths and kept moving.

As dry as it was up on the streets, it was cloying and humid below. Long, black things slivered over my feet. Slime coated my body. I didn't stop. It was probably best that I couldn't see, or really understand, my surroundings or I might not be able to continue.

After only thirty minutes in the tunnel I couldn't take any more. I clambered up a ladder to a curbside grate and gulped the dusty air above. It smelled clean and cool compared to what was below me. As bad as the crowded streets were, I wouldn't go down there again. But I couldn't just stroll down the street either. I would have to pocket jump my way to Cutter.

I had never jumped so many pockets in a row. Nobody had. Pocket jumping is like chess. You have to see the patterns, to anticipate new ones that emerge from your moves. If you get lost, if you lose track in your mind of where you're going, you can get trapped. There are dead ends in the spaces between. Careless jumping can leave you at the bottom of an energy well, with nowhere to go.

We all heard the cautionary tales about the Wraiths of old who turned to the fugue for too long — the ones who never found their way back and were lost between. One wrong move and I would find my own checkmate and disappear from the world. But would that be worse than returning to the Templum? Or the feral crowd?

I knew I couldn't keep it up for long, but I was too afraid to stop. The vulnerability of my exposed flesh, of being beyond the protection of the Order, left me overwhelmed – a feeling I had never experienced before. I had always been the prodigy — always the one with the right answer and the perfect move. Here, I knew nothing but fear.

And so I risked oblivion.

When I was beginning to believe that I could not go any farther within the pockets, the address registered on my internal map. I stopped right in front of the door and slipped into the open. I could see my surroundings when I was inside, events passing by as I jumped, but everything seemed to be covered in fog, and indistinct as I remained invisible to those around me.

The door appeared to be coated with the filth that I escaped from in the sewers, the address stamped into the metal directly above the handle. I might have missed it if I hadn't known what to look for. So far, nothing had been what I'd expected. After hours of crowded, hostile streets and scabrous sewers, it felt as if only doom awaited me here. But I trusted the Bishop.

I placed my hand on the door and pushed. I didn't know what I expected, a swoosh of air. An opening to appear? But only cold steel braced my flattened palm. I exhaled and dropped my head in exasperation. I didn't even have the most rudimentary tools to open a door. Clearly my life in the Templum had failed to prepare me for anything in the Wards.

I banged my forehead into the front of the blackened metal and gritted out my frustration between clenched teeth.

The door opened.

The girl at the door was no more than fifteen or sixteen years old. Steel-colored eyes bored into mine and silver hair glistened in the light from sodium lamps that punctuated the street behind me. Her slender body was covered in black ballistic mesh. The grips of two Darters, Wraith issue flechette-pistols, peeked from shoulder harnessess. A combat knife was clipped to her belt. She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen — save one.

For the first time in hours I dared to hope that I would be safe.

"Cutter?" Relief flooded through my small body and I relaxed my arms to my sides. My white skin shimmered beneath the dirt and grime, like old ivory in the yellow light. Her cool gray gaze scanned the length of my naked frame. I didn't try to cover myself. I wanted her to see me as I was, unarmed and in need of protection.

I showed her my trust.

For a beat, she studied my pale, naked body, then she reached out in a smooth, almost casual, cross-grip, took my arm and wrenched it behind me as she spun me flat against the wall. Her knee came up high into my back, pinning me in place.

Pain flooded my senses. My arm burst simultaneously between numbness and fire. I knew the pressure points she used, but her speed overwhelmed me. I knew precisely what she was doing yet, at every step, realization came milliseconds too late. In the instant I spent yelping in pain and surprise, she bound and blindfolded me with a sack flung over my head.

With the sack in place I couldn't see any pockets. I couldn't conjure or navigate an escape route. Nude and defenseless, I could only hope she would kill me quickly, as Wraiths are taught.

My breath came out in heavy gasps and the black cloth bag she flung over my head sucked into my mouth. I choked and spat it out then yelled, "Wait! I'm…"

"Quiet!" she hissed as she shoved me forward and bent me over a hard table. The steel beneath me shocked my exposed skin like ice water. The pain stilled my gasps and my breath caught in my throat.

I heaved out a cry and her open hand smacked into the back of my head, bouncing my cheek against the steel.

"I said shut up!"

I bit my bottom lip. I would meet my death as a Wraith. In silence.

She yanked my arms up above my head and strapped me down to the cold metal surface. As she shifted her grip to attach the restraints, I twisted and tried to slip free, but she saw the move coming and punched me hard just below my right armpit. My arm went slack and my diaphragm spasmed, leaving me gulping for air that wouldn't come.

With my cheek pressed against the table, the bag was taut enough to give me a dim, tantalizing view of the room to my right. Desperately, I scanned for pockets — anything that might give me a chance at escape. But all I saw was the gleam of a long, narrow blade as she lifted what was clearly a surgical instrument.

I would not cry. "Make it quick."

She laughed. Then she brought the blade down pressing it deep into my narrow hip.

I screamed.

A tugging feeling pulled at my hip bone as her fingers dug into the incision, under my skin. I bit my lip harder and tasted blood.

The pulling sensation stopped and I felt the warmth of her hand on my buttock. Then the blade again. It sliced up my tailbone and along my spine. Her fingers prodded inside the wound, gutting me like an animal. .

Tears bled involuntarily from my tightly clenched eyes. A thin wail clawed out of my throat, entirely outside of my control. The Bishop had sent me to slaughter and I had only one thought, "Why?"

Her fingers dug deeper and a scream of utter despair escaped my bloody lips. When she sliced the base of my skull a blinding light flashed behind my eyelids. I knew then that I would die.

I fainted instead.

I came to with the black bag folded under my head and a black satin sheet covering my body. I slitted my eyes open just enough to see, but not enough to call attention to the fact that I was awake. The room was dark and still and stale. I rested on a thin pad directly on the floor. The walls were gray. Floor, ceiling and counters too. I wondered for a moment if I'd been taken back to the Templum.

But then my gaze settled on Cutter, sitting across from me in a corner on the floor. Her eyes glittered with awareness and I knew she could tell I was no longer unconscious. The only difference in her appearance was a bandage wrapped around her left wrist.

I shifted my body slightly — tentatively. The pain in my hip and back pierced like a white hot iron rod thrusting into cold water. My body smoked with agony. But I also noticed a peculiar sensation in my belly. Hunger. And if I was hungry, then I was still alive.

Cutter stared at me. "How do you feel?"

I almost laughed. Even for a Wraith with no sense of humor, this question crossed the boundary to absurdity.

"You didn't kill me."

"I wasn't trying to."

Blanketed in silence, I watched her for another moment and slowly adjusted my corneal implants to survey the room. Even with the low light, I could see that every visible surface was spotless. The instrument she had used to slice me open rested on a counter only a few meters away. It was clean. I was clean. The faint odor of antiseptic still floated among the molecules of the air.

I wanted to keep her talking until I could find a way to get to the scalpel. Maybe I could return the favor before she decided it was time for Round 2. We were taught about torture. I knew what she could do.

"Where are we?"

Cutter cocked her head to the side slightly. "Marajo Lift, Lower Wards. Southeast Quad. About a click from Dock 9."

I raised an eyebrow slightly in question.

"Mining and reclamation. If Marajo Lift had an asshole, we'd be the shit."

"Hungry?" She asked.

"A little."

She pushed off the floor in a single graceful motion. A Wraith's grace. Again the familiarity of her comforted me even though I was certain I would meet my death at her hands.

Her long legs carried her to the small box in the opposite corner of the room. She opened it and almost instantly, the aromas of food washed over me. I knew the smells for what they were, and I liked them. But they were so different from the paltry scents of my usual diet.

"I've been hoarding a few provisions. I didn't know exactly when you would get here until I got word yesterday morning."

Yesterday morning. Could it have been only one day? I began to carefully uncurl my limbs, testing my strength. My back protested at even the mental image of moving, and something hard encased me from my hips to my neck. But if I could move, even a little, I might have a chance to get away.