Kimmie, Shift, Mai
"Sorry about what happened to your friend." Kim said as she unsheathed a sterile stitching needle, unsure how to broach the subject but feeling that it couldn't go unaddressed.
Maria shook her head. "Don't be. Emma was a bitch. She was always bullying the other juvies."
The teenager breathed out slowly, wincing as she watched Kim thread the needle in and out of her shoulder. Kim had numbed the wound with morphia gel, but the sight alone was clearly unsettling her.
"I thought I was a goner there." the young fixer added. "Shit, the way those two were lookin' at me..."
Alexi and Anais were no longer with them, having gone with Primus to drop the refugees at whatever safehouse the Kingsman had in mind. The others were now sheltering in an underpass, beneath the silent 8-lane arterial that ran straight from Vaxanhive to distant Remsburg. It was nearly midnight now, and the overcast sky had settled into cold, crisp clouds reflecting the orange glow of the hive. A portable lumo-lamp placed on the floor gave the group light, though little warmth. Quintus was prowling around the rockrete bridge struts, looking for a loose paving slab that apparently hid one of the Kingsmen's weapon caches.
"Done." Kim said, sitting back to inspect her work before reaching for a triangular bandage. "Just hold still now and I'll sling it up. How much does it hurt?"
"Like a motherfrakker." the young fixer answered, pushing her curly hair out of her eyes with her working hand. "I don't suppose you guys have any kalma on you? My heart's still going like a frakkin' mag-lev."
Shift shook her head, frowning. "That stuff's poison. Dulls the reflexes. Don't use it." She looked up, still frowning. "Pain is an illusion of the senses. Despair, an illusion of the mind."
"Thanks, I'll be sure to tell my pain that." Maria snarked.
Kim saw Maria grimace at the words. Something like indignation twisted in her stomach, making her feel compelled to justify them.
"People can take strength from different things, Maria." she admonished gently. "That could be a person, or a weapon, or it could be words."
Maria looked up at Shift. "Alright, sorry. But words ain't gonna do it for me right now."
Shift sighed. "I can remember silly phrases and useless advice, but not anything useful. Typical."
"I'd say that taking out those traffickers was pretty useful." Kim countered.
"And saving my ass." Maria chimed in gratefully, then hissed as Kim lifted her arm a little to thread the sling under it. "Ow! Watch it, will you?"
"There." Kim said a minute later, as she finished tying the sling behind Maria's neck. "That's the best I can do with my kit here, but you'll need a flash scan and a proper doctor to look at it. Is there a hospital nearby?"
"Down Pilgrim's Quarter." Maria indicated the direction with a jerk of her head. "It's full of roaches like, but it's the best we've got down here."
Kim grimaced. It would have to do.
"Soon as you feel up to it, we'd better take you there." She scowled. "Emperor knows what internal damage Alexi did when he was stamping all over you."
Maria made a face. "Emperor knows? What are you, some kind of Creed-thumper?"
"Kimmie's a priest." Quintus said quite calmly, as he reappeared with a dusty holdall. His teeth glinted in the lamp light as he offered the group an apologetic smile. "Sorry for eavesdropping - marksman's habit. I hear everything."
He dropped the holdall with a thump and sat down on top of it, unslinging his rifle and laying it over his knees. His eyes lingered in Kim's direction as he pulled out a small tin cleaning kit from a breast pocket, and snapped it open.
"Not a regular hive preacher though." he continued. "A field medic, and you know your way around a gun...I'm going to guess missionary." He grinned again. "Feral clans out in the Terrigan jungle, maybe?"
Kim looked at him uncertainly, shocked that he had been able to work out something that was still half a mystery to herself. She racked her brain to try and recall the so-vivid image that had hit her the last time Quintus had mentioned it. The farmstead; the sun beating down. Had it been here on Vaxanide? No, somewhere else. Adhara.
Stay a while. I'm Cian by the way.
She remembered staggering as she was pushed through a rickety wooden door, and the wood-on-wood clap as it was pulled shut behind her. She remembered tottering around, unsteady from the native grain liquor which she had drunk far too much of. She remembered banging on the flimsy wood of the door, half laughing and half raging at the people who were stubbornly holding it shut from the other side.
"You're not coming out until you two talk!" someone had shouted, over the music and drunken singing that was still carrying on raucously outside.
Emperor damn you, you devious frakking little shits. she remembered thinking, and only just avoided saying it out loud. Normally she was a very good actress, but she had been letting her guard slip of late - and copious amounts of alcohol had very nearly done the rest. She couldn't mention the Emperor's name - not yet. The worry disappeared almost as fast as it had come, as if it were a passing fancy and not a holy duty.
Now, she remembered thinking, if only she had been able to keep her mouth similarly shut around the campfire, instead of blathering on to the others about Cian this and Cian that, like some sort of starstruck juvie. She stumbled around and nearly fell, and had to steady herself against the cracked plaster wall. Cian, who was almost as drunk as she was, had managed to grope his way to the worn sofa and collapse into it. He blinked hard at her a couple of times, as if trying to clear his vision. Something about it struck Kim as incredibly funny, and she doubled over, laughing helplessly.
"Well," Cian shrugged, clumsily slapping the empty seat next to him. "You might as well stay a while."
She had stayed - and she had done rather a lot more besides.
They were on a sun-drenched hill, overlooking the sacred groves. The fishbone skeleton of the Forbidden City loomed in the distance - the city which they would have to eventually reclaim. The time was close now; after a year Kim and her fellow missionaries had learned all they were going to of the natives' ways and beliefs. The deacon was anxious to begin shaping those beliefs towards righteous worship of the holy God-Emperor. Once the indigens were rid of their superstitious fears, the cities could be resettled, and Adhara would once again be a productive world of the Imperium.
To be the key to such an important work, the returning of an entire planet to the Emperor's fold, should have fired every dutiful and patriotic nerve in Kim's body. But somehow, the pride felt forced.
"What would you think if I had to go away for a while?" she asked Cian, her fingers laced through his and her head resting on his shoulder.
She shouldn't have been here with him, and she definitely shouldn't have been asking questions that hinted at the deacon's plan. And yet she felt compelled. Perhaps she was hoping for an answer that would ease her conscience, but if so she didn't receive it.
"What?" Cian shifted around to face her, and Kim leaned back from his shoulder. The man's expression was the exact look of puzzled hurt that she had feared to see. It cut her even deeper than she had been prepared for. "Go where? Why?"
Kim forced a laugh, and adopted a soothing tone. "I was thinking of maybe tagging along with one of the market caravans next month, that's all." She lied to cover herself. "I've never seen Hill Town."
Cian visibly relaxed. "Spirits be good, Kimmie. I thought you were talking about going back to Wandering."
"No, of course not!" Kim laughed, and rested her cheek back on his shoulder. "I want to stay." That wasn't a lie.
And the worrying thing was that it was possible. Missionaries disappeared out in the wilds all the time - it was a known and embraced risk of their calling. No-one would come after her. She blinked. Was it blasphemy to entertain such thoughts?
What is the point of faith if it's not tested? She was familiar with the words, but right now they sounded more like a platitude.
She was on a rickety bridge over the river Vaeser, summoning the courage to take the last step. The last step she needed to make before she went back for the travelling supplies she had already hidden in the woods.
Even now she hesitated. The deacon called phase 2 to begin on the next full moon. You're out of time! She needed to return to the waiting shuttle. She and the other missionaries were to reappear in the sacred groves across Adhara, in a blaze of radiant light. Kim was to be dropped near a village hundreds of miles from here, where the natives would not recognise her face. That was what she needed to do. It was always about what she needed to do, not what she wanted to do.
She let out a shuddering gasp; cuffed at her eyes, and gripped the guard-rail hard as she looked down at the churning water. She took another deep breath.
The daemon wears an angel's face. she remembered telling herself, rigidly. Cian was no daemon, but the temptation to abandon her duty to the Emperor was. You stupid little girl! Everything he thinks he knows about you is a lie! With savage purpose, she kicked her foot through the rotted planks at the side of the bridge. There was a crack as they tumbled into the river and disappeared amongst the white foam. Kneeling by the jagged hole, Kim hooked her sleeve around an exposed nail, and tugged until her tunic ripped, leaving a shred of material snagged on the metal. She looked down at it for a long moment.
It's not too late to change your mind.
Yes it was. And so, steeling herself, she hurried back across the bridge and into the trees. Kim the Wanderer was dead. It was time for Raeden, the Prophet of the Emperor's Word, to be born.
Stay.
Why hadn't she? The Emperor's name was an insistent tug at the back of her mind, but the pain of the memory was raw, immediate, visceral. If she had felt then as she felt now, then how had she been able to bear her decision?
Kim blinked, and realised that there were tears in her eyes. She rubbed them away under the pretext of scratching her nose, and hoped that the others didn't notice. She felt responsible for the others, and now she knew why. She was their missionary. That meant she had to set an example.
But an example for what? For the Emperor? Like on regressed Adhara, it was clear that he held no power down here. Not in the abandoned slums that clumped below the hive proper, at any rate. And like on Adhara, he did not hold a monopoly on compassion. All the mercy and justice she had seen since waking up on the riverside concrete had come from the Kingsmen. All she had of the Emperor was a silver sunburst, and a warning about daemons and angel's faces that went against the strongest feeling she had had since her amnesiac rebirth.
Shift looked away from Kim. She thought she had seen. . . it was probably nothing. And whatever was there, wasn't for her.
Quintus didn't seem to have caught Kim's momentary discomfort. He was looking at Shift.
"You were definitely some sort of professional." he mused, wagging a finger at her thoughtfully. "But you..." He looked at Mai, and paused. "I have to admit I have no idea who you might have been."
She looked back at him blankly, outwardly seeming not to hear him. Yet in her mind’s eye the world imploded and another took its place. Images blurred as they rushed past her. Here a forest, no, a tundra. There, the towering ruins of a crumbled empire. And here, tunnels that swallowed light like the darkness of space.
She blinked and lifted her arm, the rough-spun brown cloth little more than a rag on her arm. It was not a bandage; something told her that it was all they could manage. They. She looked around and realized that she was not alone. A jungle, she was in a jungle somewhere. Others surrounded her, their skins tanned by the relentless sun where it broke through the leaves overhead, beating down on their exposed skin. Men and women, young and old. She knew them, but could put no names to them. Their faces, their entire forms, were present, but blurred like a smeared pic-capture whenever she tried to focus on them.
Pict-capture. She knew it was something she didn’t know, didn’t understand. Yet somehow she knew it and understood it. A figment of her imagination? A memory? Not from before, certainly. Then after? Was there an after? Looking along the path as the group moved around her, she somehow knew that there was little after for many of them. They murmured quietly or said nothing at all, as if they knew what was about to happen. There would be no after for them, any of them.
She heard something, something familiar, but she could not place it. A sound? It was someone speaking. A name? She turned and saw one of the figures moving toward her, a blur like the others. It was repeating the same sound again and again and she knew somehow it was calling her name. Reaching her, it stopped. Then it reached out a hand to grasp her arm...
And the world snapped back into place. Well, the world of cold metal and sickly lights and the man asking her something. Something about herself. Something even she did not know. She lifted her arm and looked at the fine, brightly colored cloth that hung from it. Looking up at him from where she sat, she said, “Mmm.”
"I still don't get it." Maria winced as she leaned back against the rockrete bridge pillar. She tilted her head to look up at Shift. "Not to sound ungrateful or nothin', but why would folk like you stick your necks out for me, right after you iced all those smugglers?"
Good question Shift thought to herself.
“Because I gave my word.” She finally said. “I made you a promise, and if we don’t keep our word we are no better than the Refuge who lies to refugees and makes them slaves.”
"We don't..." Maria protested, looking alarmed. "Here. Vamassian's a bastard but he's not a slaver. We help them get into the hive so they can have a better life!"
Quintus was looking at Maria calmly, but there was something venomous behind his eyes.
Maria's jaw worked silently for a minute, but then she rallied. "They send our people up there too!" she said, raising her good arm to jab an accusing finger towards Quintus. "My brother said that Liza K went uphive just a few weeks back, to work in some noble's villa."
"Liza K." Quintus seemed to nod to himself, before fixing Maria with an extremely cold stare. "I assume you're talking about Eliza Krikorian, daughter of Tavit and Emma? Yeah, I recall they came to us a few months ago - a man in a cross jacket kept meeting Eliza after scholem, giving her little bits of jewellery and stuff. They couldn't get him to leave her alone. And then before we could find him, she runs away from home..."
Quintus finished cleaning his rifle and racked the bolt with a savage snap-click.
"As I recall, Eliza was fourteen standard - a bit young to be making these decisions for herself, no? Anais' blood is protecting you, Maria Nazarian, but if I see you back with the Refuge when we hit them, I swear I'll give the Red King your skull. I refuse to believe you knew nothing about any of this."
Maria seemed to wilt, and her face crumpled. She rubbed at the cross tattoo on her palm, as if it were a stain that she could remove.
"You can't get out." she whispered after a long moment, avoiding everyone's eyes. "No matter what you hear. The...rumours. If you try to run they find you - and your family. Half the reason I joined is I was already a target 'cause of Rhen..."
"What about the enforcers?" Kim asked. Every hive was supposed to have enforcers - pious lawkeepers who were supposed to protect citizens from the kind of monstrous exploitation the Refuge were inflicting. It was one of the scattergun of facts that were slowly coming back to her. "Could you go to them?"
Both Maria and Quintus twisted their mouths, and Maria looked at her as if she had made a particularly obvious mistake as she cuffed at her eyes.
"We're underhivers, Kimmie." Quintus said. Knowing of her amnesia his voice was level, although there was still a touch of accusation behind it. "We're chaff. The only time the Hive Gendarmes take notice of us is when we put a foot out of line. No offence to you, Kimmie, but no Imperial I ever met treated us like the human brothers your Emperor insists we are."
He levered himself up off the duffel bag and unzipped it.
"That's why I joined the Kingsmen. The Red King isn't a forgiving god, but he doesn't lie to you. And he offers justice."
The marksman folded down the sides of the bag, and unveiled an arsenal of old but eminently serviceable weaponry. There was an array of switchblades and PDF-surplus bayonets, mass-produced pistols and stubby, long-handled automatics, and extra magazines for each.
"Frakkin' hell." Maria muttered as she looked at it all.
"Don't you worry." Quintus murmured coolly as he scooped up a pistol and screwed a chunky silencer onto the end of the barrel. "None of this is for you or your brother. I'll stand by Primus and Shift's word."
“But, bearing all that in mind, I still wouldn’t recommend getting in our way from now on." Shift put in. "This is only going to end one way.” She smiled, relishing what was to come. She was eager to get moving again, get the blood pumping, start hunting and killing again. She felt like time was slipping away from her.
"The hotel on Mertesari's right up against the walls of the spire, if I remember right." Quintus said thoughtfully as he knelt down next to the arsenal. "Has its own walled grounds. I'll take us somewhere where we can get a good look."
He looked at Shift, appraisingly.
"Primus said you hacked your way out of Melina's place - how would you go about storming a bigger building?"
As he spoke, a loud roar assaulted Mai's ears. It was sudden and fierce enough to make her start, but no-one else seemed to notice until a moment later, when a screaming prometheum engine crescendoed above their heads, changed pitch as it ripped past them, and then dopplered away into the distance.
"Frakkin' boy racers." Maria growled, looking up at the underside of the arterial bridge.
"Some rich uphiver's kid must have bribed them to open the gates." Quintus theorised, paying the disturbance no more mind as he turned back to Shift. "So what are your thoughts, professional?"
“Flatterer.” Shift smiled. “I'd be willing to bet the sub levels and the walls will be too tight to squeeze through, and they will have enough bodies to shoot us down in a frontal assault.” She stood up and picked up an automatic autopistol, looking it over appraisingly, before frowning and putting it back.
“I have no idea how to use that. Anyway, if it's up against the spire wall, we could scale down that into the compound, come in through the roof. It would be risky, but we don't have the manpower to bust our way in. We might get lucky with trying an entrance from below, but from above. . .I'd bet they would never see it coming."
"From above..." Quintus mused. He broke into a grin, his pearly teeth glinting in the lamplight. "I like it. Let's get to that vantage point and scope it out."
* * * * * *
Abner, Rhenat
Rhenat still couldn't get Vamassian's smile out of his head. He had a vivid memory of a matching one being worn by a stern, matronly woman, at the same time as he proudly emerged from the storm drains clutching a wriggling lizard with a missing toe and a blue ident tag around its neck. It was a smile that said I'm glad you're alive while all these people are around, but the minute we're alone you're getting such a hiding.
He cracked his knuckles, nervously. His brain was already scrambled and he didn't need anything making it worse. Just how hard had he hit his head out there anyway? He couldn't even remember the names of the two lanky, tattooed young men who had accosted him as soon as he had stepped into the bar.
Alright, he told himself, Don't frak it up, let everyone else do the talking...
The bar was an uneasy mix of the strange and the somehow familiar; a disorientating deja vu of faces, voices, and worn but good quality furniture. The air was hazy, and the smoke smelled of acrid lho and the sweeter, more pungent aroma of grinweed. One of the smirking youths in front of him had a floppy mop of dark hair; the other had buzzed his right back to the skull to give no distraction from a pugnacious face with cold blue eyes.
"Hear you gave those Red bastards a kicking, eh?" Floppy-Hair said, thumping Rhenat on the back hard enough to make him blink. "Takin' out the whole gang, even that frakker with the sword? That shit is bananas, mate!"
"Can't have been that great if Vamassian's still got the hero serving drinks." the other laughed.
Something about that pissed Rhenat off, and he scowled before he could stop himself. "Here, what does a guy have to do to get respect from you folk?"
"You could get us a drink?" suggested Buzz-Cut, putting an arm around Rhenat's shoulders and steering him towards the bar.
It was only then that Rhenat remembered that he was supposed to be collecting drinks for Vamassian and the newbies. He realised that Vamassian hadn't given him an order, and he experienced a moment of silent panic before the lady behind the bar bailed him out.
"Sam and Ellen want their usual, yeah Rhen?" she asked, pausing to toss her rusty hair out of her eyes and cock her head at him.
"Yeah," Rhenat answered, and nodded a bit too enthusiastically. "And for these two." He jerked his thumb to either side to indicate Floppy-Hair and Buzz-Cut.
"Just a pint for me, ta." said Floppy-Hair. Buzz-Cut merely twitched his chin upward to indicate the same.
Rhenat coughed into his hand. "Oh, yeah, and two for the new guys as well."
"Not three?" the barmaid repeated, and then shrugged. "I suppose the gear-heads don't do something as normal as drink."
As she busied herself with the bottles stacked on the back wall, Floppy-Hair and Buzz-Cut leaned their arms against the bar to watch her work.
Frak off, is that all I am around here? Rhenat thought as he looked around the bar to avoid his companions' eyes, A bloody waiter? Waking up amongst the blood and bodies at the warehouse had not been something he ever wanted to repeat, but somehow he had pictured himself being a bigger cog in this - the frak did they call it? - Refuge for out-hivers.
"Cheer up Rhen." said Floppy-Hair, and Rhenat turned to see that the other young man was already looking at him. "Everyone has to work their way up, just like 'Ria was working the corners for six months before Vamassian let her go meet the connect with Emma."
Rhenat didn't know who 'Ria and Emma were, so he just shrugged. Buzz-Cut growled as he picked his drink up off the bar, slopping a streak of foam down the side of the glass.
"That Emma needs a good railing." he growled. "She's so frakkin' full of herself." He paused to raise the straw-coloured beer to his lips and reduce its contents by a third. "I'd love to see what she looks like when she's full of me instead."
"Mate," Floppy-Hair grinned. "Half full, at best."
"Frak you." Buzz-Cut drawled, and used his free hand to punch his colleague in the arm. He took another drink, and paused to belch. "Are they even back yet? The frak are they doing out there?"
"Maybe they're meetin' up with Petrosyan after he's done his voodoo shit?" Floppy-Hair suggested, "Let him inspect the merchandise, you know?"
He turned to Rhenat and gave him a comforting slap on the back that he didn't fully understand.
"Don't worry, 'Ria'll be alright. The Reds are down and out, so who else could give them real trouble?"
Again, Rhenat didn't know who 'Ria was supposed to be to him, so he settled for pursing his lips in a determined frown and nodding. "Yeah. Right."
"You're movin' up in the world, mate." Floppy-Hair said, and bobbed his glass upwards in a toast in Rhenat's direction. "You didn' even bottle it like Narek and Tigran did. If the boss'll let you go fight the Reds and you come back alive from that shit, you'll be movin' up from Big Sam's tanna-boy in no time."
"Assuming he's not pissed off you didn' die like the meat shield you were supposed to be." Buzz-Cut grinned nastily, and both young men laughed.
Rhenat would have scowled again, but the name Big Sam sent a twinge through his stomach, and he found himself thinking again of Vamassian's shark-like smile. He sniffed, and cuffed at his nose.
"Tell you the truth mate," he confided in Floppy-Hair, "I can't wait to be away from him. He creeps me the frak out."
Floppy-Hair laughed, but Buzz-Cut frowned and slapped his colleague on the arm.
"Hey, Rhen." he said warningly. "Don't bad-mouth the new boss in front of everyone, eh? He might be a warper but someone'll tell him just to look good and you'll get a bullet in the head."
Rhenat's stomach dropped. "You what?"
Floppy-Hair's confused grimace told him that he had just made a bad error, but once again he was saved by the distraction of the door to the bar room swinging open, shooting a loud creak through the smoke-hazed air. The smoke almost seemed to part like a theatrical curtain as the angular, silk-clad figure of Vamassian ambled into the room, flanked by Abner and the blonde knife-woman whose name Rhenat had forgotten. He had trouble taking his eyes off her - she had a gymnast's body under her leather jacket, paired with a cat's eyes and a conjurer's hands. She seemed angry about something, and was toying with the hilt of her sickle knife.
Frakkin' hell, Rhenat found himself thinking. I'd nail that - if she didn't look like she'd nail me to a wall first...
"Drinks, Rhen." Floppy-Hair hissed out the side of his mouth, and Rhenat got a hold of himself just in time, reaching for the glasses that the barmaid had earmarked for Vamassian and Ellen.
"Thanks, Rhen." the Refuge's new leader nodded, before casting an eye up and down Rhenat's blood-spattered cargoes. "Go get yourself changed before the duke gets here. Burn the old stuff; you know the drill."
Rhenat did not, but he nodded to buy time.
"I'll go with you." Buzz-Cut grunted. "I need to drop a line to Aram's mother."
Vamassian clicked his tongue, and sipped thoughtfully at his glass. "Nara can give you the full list. Reassure the families that we're going to take care of them." He exhaled. "And get the girls ready, will you? The duke will be here in an hour and his entourage expect distractions."
"Distractions?" Abner asked, creasing his pasty, pock-marked face.
Vamassian smiled easily and passed the new recruit his drink. "That's the beauty Abner. Gems, drugs, proscribed items - you can only sell them once. People you can sell over and over again."
Abner cocked his head. "I thought you were protecting people?"
Vamassian frowned, as if he saw no contradiction. "We are. But people have to earn their keep, right? And some of them will even get to move on to a better life uphive."
The leader's fingertips were tapping up and down the glass - index, middle, ring, pinkie, back again - just like on the sofa arm. Abruptly, he wheeled back towards the door, gesturing animatedly for Abner to pick up the spare glasses.
"Come with me, Abner. We owe our friends drinks." He smiled easily. "Your timing couldn't be better, you know. The duke knows what I am, but he won't suspect you."
Rhenat gulped and exhaled quietly as he watched Vamassian's back retreat out of the room. He felt a tight craving in his chest, but didn't realise what it was for until his hand automatically found a crumpled packet of lho sticks in his pocket.
"You guys got a lighter?" he asked Floppy-Hair and Buzz-Cut.
Buzz-Cut thumped him on the back. "In a minute. We've got shit to do."
He downed the rest of his drink and sloped off towards the door. Figuring that the other youth knew where he was going, Rhenat followed. Buzz-Cut didn't seem inclined to talk further as they exited the bar and stomped up two flights of stairs, with faded carpets and chipped enamel handrails. Through a set of double doors at the top was what Rhenat assumed to be an accommodation wing of the old hotel, with rows of identical hardwood doors ranked up on either side of the corridor. There was a long, jagged crack in the ceiling plaster, and the lumoglobe closest to the door was fizzing and flickering. The thing that immediately drew Rhenat's eye however were the two men idling at the end of the corridor, hands in the pockets of their cross-emblazoned jackets and stubber pistols openly carried on their belts.
"Need some eye-candy for the visitors?" the older of the two men asked, evidently expecting them.
Buzz-Cut jerked his head. "Yeah."
"Boys or birds?"
"Just birds."
The man dug around in his jacket pocket and retrieved a fistful of keys. He jangled over to one of the hardwood doors and fumbled for a moment with a padlock below the handle. It was only then that Rhenat realised that all the doors in the corridor had been drilled and refitted with padlocks. The guard hooked the padlock off with a rattle and pushed the door open carelessly, leaving it to swing back on its hinges. As he ambled away, Rhenat peered past him and saw that the room beyond had been converted into some sort of changing room, with several dressing tables shoved up against the far wall. There was a full length mirror to complement the oval glasses that sat above each dresser, although Rhenat noticed that one of its bottom corners sported a crack. To one side stood a metal clothes rack, hung with a variety of short and long dresses.
While Rhenat was preoccupied, the man with the keys had slouched over to the other side of the corridor and clicked open one of the other padlocks. "Take your pick." he invited Rhenat in a bored voice, stepping back and resting his wrist on his holstered stubber. The second, younger guard grinned at him.
Rhenat poked his head through the door, and was greeted by a smell of must. He saw that the walls of the individual rooms had been knocked through to form one long dormitory, leaving the bathrooms as small cubicles, and some of the tables and chairs had been sandwiched together. Dirty plates and cups were stacked on two of them, as if waiting to be taken away. Six or seven beds stood in various states of rumpled disorder. The windows were locked closed, which Rhenat supposed explained the musty smell, and they had all been repainted black, leaving the dusty lumoglobes hanging from the ceiling as the only illumination. The dingy dormitory was occupied by about a dozen young women and half as many young boys, all dressed in grubby loungewear. They sat in ones and twos at the tables and on the beds, but none of them were talking to each other. In fact they looked oddly frozen, as if they had stopped whatever they were doing when they heard the padlock click. They looked back at Rhenat with studiously neutral expressions.
Rhenat was no good at guessing ages, but if pressed he would have placed the kids as ranging between their early teens and perhaps a year older than himself. There were three tanned outhiver girls, several more with the earthy-brown skin and curly hair that was common in hive Remsburg, and a few dark-eyed, olive boys and girls who must have been from even further afield. There were even two with faces pale and fine-boned enough to have passed for Vaxan uphivers. Most of them looked underfed, but despite their thin frames and ratty clothing, one thing that all of them had in common was that they were all stunningly attractive.
Rhenat cuffed his nose. He could appreciate a pretty figure as well as anyone else, if not more, but the surreal situation stole any eroticism from the moment. He must have hesitated for slightly too long, because Buzz-Cut huffed down his nose and shoved him impatiently out of the way.
"You, you and you." he stated, pointing at three of the young women seemingly at random. He considered for a second, then indicated a fourth. "Actually, you an' all. There's always one greedy bastard. Come on, get movin' and get your kit on."
He thumped the doorframe with his fist for emphasis.
The four young women stood up silently and filed out of the dormitory into the dressing room. Rhenat jumped back hurriedly to get out of their way. The first one through winked at Rhenat as she caught his eye, but the two following her looked almost bored. The girl bringing up the rear, who was by far the youngest of the four, actively avoided his gaze. Rhenat cracked his knuckles and looked away uneasily, though the younger of the two guards leaning against the wall next to him seemed to have no such reservations. He craned his head to one side to get a better view of the last girl as she passed him, and whistled appreciatively as he aimed a hard swipe of his hand across the back of her flannel shorts. The girl flinched, but otherwise didn't respond as she shuffled into the dressing room and pulled the door closed behind her.
"Lucky bastards, eh?" the young guard grinned, pressing his tongue up against his front teeth. He turned to Rhenat when his older companion seemed indifferent. Rhenat got the feeling that he was supposed to laugh and agree, but all he could manage was a grimace. The fact that he was the only one who seemed to find anything wrong about all this made him even more intensely uncomfortable. I wish this frakkin' head-frak would clear up, man. Logically, he knew that he must have spent some amount of time around the safehouse before. And Vamassian had said the refugees were just paying their way, right? The gang leader's shark-like smile floated once again to the front of his mind. Then why'd they need to lock the frakkin' door?
"Hey Rhen," the younger guard frowned, "What happened to you? You finally get in a fight?"
Rhenat looked down at the blood spots on his cargo trousers, and seized eagerly on the distraction. "Yeah, gave the Reds a kickin'." he boasted, "Where can I get rid of 'em?"
Buzz-Cut snorted, and punched him in the back - lightly, but it still made Rhenat flinch. "Use the fire-barrels out back, dumbass. Haven't you seen Nara's boys go out and come back enough times?"
"I know that." Rhenat scowled, backtracking hurriedly. "I mean what am I gonna wear instead, huh?"
The young guard laughed, and fished a set of keys out of his own jacket pocket. This one had a circular plastek token on the ring, stamped with the number 216 in faded gold leaf. "Tell you what, mate, you can borrow a pair of mine. My stuff's in the corner cupboard." He tossed the key to Rhenat, who fumbled the catch but managed to secure the keys before they fell to the floor. "Go on, I'll bring the girls down when they're ready. But I want my shit back, d'you hear?" he added as Rhenat bailed out of the accommodation wing as fast as he dared.
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