I turned away from the edge and dropped onto rickety scaffolding, out of plain sight and into thick shadows where metal clanged and cloying air hung limp.
I had to find Sota. If that fae discovered my secrets, more than just my life would be at stake.
Chapter 2
Lights blinked on in my habitat container, welcoming me home with warm “tropical sunset” hues. Sota had set the theme, saying he liked to feel the warmth in the light. I’d given up correcting him on the limitations of his feelings. He liked his fiction. Now the white and orange halos of color splashed against the wall only reminded me that he wasn’t here to argue.
“Lights, default.”
The lights lifted to a brighter white, illuminating the small rectangular space I called home.
The one window looked out into a narrow gulley between containers, affording a view consisting of a 5x5 patch of corrugated cladding for the identical rows of containers opposite mine. I pulled the blind down and flicked a switch to turn on the fake rain-on-glass projection. I hadn’t felt real rain in a long time. The projection was nothing like the real thing. The fresh, clean smell, the pitter-pattering sound. Best not to think on it… I’d already woken too many memories today.
Unhooking my whip and pistol, I set both weapons down on the kitchen counter and shrugged off my coat. A few dark spots marred the coat’s fabric. Any permanent marks would interfere with the garment’s ability to enhance my tek-whispering. Hopefully, its self-clean coating would soon break down the blood.
I planted my hands on my hips and scanned my container. How was it possible this space felt smaller?
Sota’s dock sat empty. Its receiving light blinked, searching for the drone’s signal.
I would get him back.
So, the guy was fae… So, he’d killed a mineworker… I had faced much worse.
Tussling with the fae hadn’t been on today’s to-do list. Get up, go to work, deliver messages, come home again, rattle around my container, maybe drop by The Boot. My days weren’t complicated. That’s the way I liked it. Easy. No drama. That was the way it had to be.
I watched the fake rain stream down the projector screen. Like a thousand tears.
How long had it been? Five years? And in all that time I had never once slipped. Here, I was a nobody. Just a messenger. Invisible to people as well as tek. But now…?
This wasn’t about me. It couldn’t be. The fae had taken Sota because of the footage of the assassination, leaving me to take the fall. That was all.
I combed my fingers through my hair and winced as my nail snagged on a dried clump of something I didn’t want to think too hard on. Stripping off, I stepped into the shower tube and braced both hands against the pads. Air mixed with chemicals blasted over me from above. The burn quickly faded to an almost pleasurable numbness. Dark, swirling thorn tattoos marked my skin. Sometimes I thought they looked like vines, other times like shackles. Reminders. Brands. Memories. I pushed the thoughts away and ignored it all, like always.
At least Crater’s death had been quick. The asshole hadn’t seen his end coming. That had to be better than having death stalk you for weeks, months, years. A criminal like him, he must have known someone would take him out eventually. But why did the warfae want Crater dead? How was a mineworker embroiled with a fae who shouldn’t exist? A fae who used tek, a fae who moved freely on Calicto a thousand years since the treaty. Enough damned time had passed that most common people thought they were a myth, a story told to keep foolish settlers from roaming into the no-go zones at the edges of Halow space.
Doesn’t matter.
Sota had the evidence I needed. His footage of the scene was the only definitive proof that I was innocent. I had to get him back. Whatever Crater and the fae were involved in, I didn’t need to know the whys or what-fors.
Dry-showered and skin buzzing, I dressed, tossed back a protein bar and flicked on the newsfeed. An image flickered in the air, recoiling from my resonance. I moved away, and the picture cleared.
“…was a prominent figure among the mineworkers’ union, having successfully campaigned for a substantial ration increase…” I picked up my coat and brushed the dried blood off. “Authorities have admitted that there appears to be no recorded evidence of the assassination and that the security systems failed to detain the offender, who is still at large. Arcon—the manufacturer of ninety percent of Halo’s surveillance and detainment systems—chose not to comment.”
Arcon. I snorted a laugh. They had sent someone after me after learning that an illegal messenger could stroll through their tek as easily as walking through an open door. Of course, they had brought all their ultra-enhanced tek with them. Their conclusion? I didn’t exist. Tek-whisperers were a myth. Their security was infallible. That was the day I upped my delivery rates.
Was that how the fae had eluded Calicto’s planet-wide scanners? How else might an armed fae move so freely in one of the most monitored societies in the Halow system?
My smile faded.
Everyone left a trail on Calicto, if you knew where to look.
I threw my coat over my shoulders and hitched my weapons. I was getting my drone back—and no mythical warfae would stand in my way.
The air in the market gulley smelled like salted meats, sweating spices and the press of too many bodies all funneled into a narrow stretch of street wedged between two rows of tightly packed habitat containers. This was Sage, Calicto’s B Sector, and my neighborhood. Vast fans hummed above, drawing air through the gulley and recycling it through various filters, only to push it out again below our feet, drier, and laced with something sweet and sickly. Some bureaucrat a million miles away probably had to tick a box labeled “Calicto Aid,” and figured the smell of flowers would put smiles on our faces. Unfortunately, what they couldn’t have known unless they’d bothered to take the time to visit, was that artificial fragrance mixed with Calicto’s habitat air made a nauseating combination. I’d lived here for enough rotations that it no longer turned my stomach, but it kept home container prices down and the tourists away—just the way Sector Bs like me preferred.
I carved through the crowds alone. Usually, Sota would be providing a running commentary, listing any new imports from around the Halow system. He prattled on about nonsense so often that I filtered him out, but now that I was alone, I missed the constant stream of information and found myself strangely disconnected from the goings-on around me. I also missed his early detection sensors. He could have spotted any of Crater’s gang long before me. It was unlikely Crater’s crew would track me back to B Sector—like their security sweeps, I’d whispered my way around any nearby monitoring devices, preventing them from capturing my image—but there was always a chance I’d missed a device, especially if any of his crew had ocular implants. Biotek was difficult to whisper around.
I nodded at a few familiar faces. Questions lit up in their eyes when they noticed I didn’t have Sota shadowing me. I hurried deeper into the gulley where the lights struggled to penetrate the gloom. Naked cables crisscrossed the space above the gulley, turning the thoroughfare into a tunnel. It’s widely known that all the “best” things happened in the sinks—the name given to this end of the gulley. “Best” for B sectors, generally meant rowdy, dirty and probably illegal. Cameras had long ago failed, leaving the authorities blind to the sinks, and none had dared to venture down here to fix them. Not in sight, not in mind, as Merry liked to say.
It was Merry I saw as I peeled back the thick, leathery drape and entered her ramshackle hut. Merry wore a high-collared coat, buttoned all the way from her ankles to her chin. I’d never seen her wear anything else, but I’d never seen her outside the hut either.