Daughters of Forgotten Light Page 4

  “You mean before they made it a child’s prison?”

  Martin chuckled and wagged a finger. “I said tone down the patriotism, not completely remove it. Linda, I want to know more. I want to know what this interstellar city of glass has become. Use whatever resources you need.”

  “Why me?”

  Martin placed a hand on Dolfuse’s shoulder. It weighed virtually nothing but the discomfort it brought was immeasurable. “I know we’ve had our differences, but I know you’re one of the few on the Hill who can get things done. And quietly. I’ll help clear your schedule as best I can. Obviously you’ll have to make your committee appearances and any public speeches you have lined up. Other than that, I need your full attention on getting us some intel.”

  “Does the president–”

  “For now this is just between you and me. I’d rather have something to show Griffin before asking permission.”

  “Better to ask for forgiveness.”

  Martin leaned back into the chair, smiling still, but Dolfuse caught a flash of a sneer. “There’s no such thing as forgiveness.”

  Dolfuse nodded, although she didn’t understand what Martin meant.

  The vice president glanced at the gold watch strapped to her wrist and bolted from her seat. “That’s all we can talk about it for now, Linda. Just find a way to get us some information to work with and we’ll meet again. Sooner the better.”

  Dolfuse’s pain had disappeared. Her guilt had been replaced with purpose. Martin stood at the door and held it open. Clutching the Oubliette file to her chest, Dolfuse nodded to the vice president, who smiled graciously and shut the door as soon as the senator had passed through.

  What the hell did I just get conned into?

  That’s all politics was – legal and encouraged bamboozlement. You could try to fight the current all you wanted, but you’d get dragged under and drown while everyone who played the game got to drink and dance on the riverboat. Dolfuse never claimed to be that great at cutting a rug, but she was always thirsty. That’s how the world worked. She’d do what she was asked and use it to her own benefit.

  As she clomped down the hallway, thinking of where to start, she found herself holding the confidential file in her arms just a little too tightly. The file was just a gathering of paper and ink, not a baby. But for some reason, right then and there, when she reached the steps in front of the Eisenhower Building, oh God, did she want it to be.

  Chapter 4

  Sarah Pao was in Hell. She was trying to think of how lucky she was to still be alive when the women, these criminals riding on wheels of light, brought her to their ganghouse. “House” was really the wrong word for it. The dark glass building stood tall amongst the ruin of former tall buildings, looking like a small skyscraper back on Earth, but much… stranger. All the buildings looked that way, as if she’d arrived on an alien world and not some unfinished dream of humans long dead. Unlike most cities on Earth, the lights here flickered dimly, and the glowing streets lay mostly silent.

  The gang rode up a wide ramp and through the front doors after the big one opened them with a card key.

  “Here we are,” said the woman she rode with.

  They got off the strange motorcycles in a large, circular room. At first she didn’t know where they were, but lights buzzed on at their presence and she got a full view of her new home.

  A lot of empty crates, the same ones she and the others had been shipped out with, just like the one they were told to eat from during the long trip to the space gate. God, she’d thought she’d only have to suffer eating that shit for the trip in. Now, she understood she’d better get used to eating it for the rest of her days. Manna, they called it. At least it only took a pinch of the loaf to get good and full.

  The woman with Down syndrome jumped onto a couch made from an old shipment crate. Sarah’s crueler schoolmates back on Earth would have called her all sorts of terrible things, but here, on the prison city, she seemed to be one of the more important inhabitants. “Sit down,” she said.

  Sarah looked around for a chair or at least another refurbished box couch. “Where?”

  “Here on the floor.” The gang member pointed just in front of her. “We’ve got to tell you about some things so you don’t get yourself killed. Or wreck our bike. When you earn the right to ride it.”

  “And the bike is worth a whole lot more than you,” the big, muscled one said. Her hair had been cut short with designs of stars and moons buzzed over her ears and around the back of her head.

  The one who’d picked Sarah from the lineup – Horror, Sarah thought her name was – left them and disappeared behind another set of doors, up a long rise of black stairs.

  “We just need you to understand what you’re in for. My name’s Rochelle Hurley.” She grinned just a little too enthusiastically and sat on the floor beside Sarah, touching their knees together. Hurley was blonde and reminded Sarah of the Harley Quinn character from the Batman comics. She even wore some strange, streaky mascara to bring the comparison more strongly to mind.

  “But we all call her Hurley Girly,” the big one said. “She used to be the ass. Now that’s you. I’m Serendipity Wales, Dipity for short.”

  “Ass?” Sarah asked.

  “Yeah,” Dipity said. “You’re at the end and take all the shit.”

  “We all have our place in this gang, like parts of a body,” the one on the couch said. “I’m Ava Munoz. I’m the right arm. Dipity is the left arm. Sterling is the right leg…”

  The quiet one leaned on a support beam with her arms crossed. She raised a thin, dark eyebrow, and nodded in greeting.

  “…and you just heard what Hurley Girly used to be. Now she’s the left leg.”

  Hurley Girly wrapped her arm around Sarah’s shoulders. “And Lena’s our head.”

  Lena. That’s what it was. They’d called her all kinds of things at that horrible place when the shipment door came down. Lena. Horror. Horowitz.

  “What happened to the other left leg?” Sarah asked.

  They all looked at each other. Even Hurley Girly dropped her smile. Sarah’s stomach tightened. She must have said something she shouldn’t have.

  “First rule.” Ava put a finger in Sarah’s face. “You don’t ask questions. You take what we give you and you do what we tell you. Got it?”

  Sarah nodded. Keep your mouth shut. Easier in theory, but she could keep to that simple task. She clasped her hands, focusing on squeezing them together.

  Ava seemed satisfied with that. She pushed her brown hair from her eyes. “Rule two. You only speak when spoken to.”

  Sarah nodded again.

  “So,” Ava said. “I get first question. What did you do to get sent here?”

  Sarah had expected she’d get asked this question when she got to Oubliette, if nothing else. She’d practiced her answer a thousand times on the trip to the space gate but now struggled to find the words she’d so carefully put together. “Nothing,” was what came out.

  They all laughed, except Sterling. She just smiled.

  “All right, all right,” Dipity said. “Let’s have a little guessing game. You don’t seem like a criminal. You don’t look like you have anything wrong with you physically. You bipolar or something?”

  “You a lesbian?” Hurley Girly smiled.

  “Spying for the EA?” Ava suggested.

  “Hey!” Hurley Girly said, “That’s a good one. I might make that my next bet on Horror.”

  “None of that,” Sarah said. “My family couldn’t afford to keep me.”

  “So it’s a poverty sentence you’re serving,” Dipity clapped her hands. “I should have guessed that. Most dwellers are here because their parents got caught having too many kids or they needed the money to survive.”

  “My father lost his job,” Sarah said. “He had my mother sell Miko, my brother, to the military, but I guess it wasn’t enough. And I was stupid, stole a dope syringe from a shop near my house.” She waved a weak hand at
her blue hair. “They tracked me down and made my father pay for it, since I’d already injected. That didn’t help, so my parents decided it would be best to send me here instead of the military.”

  “But it was your mother who had to fill out the paperwork and make the final call.” Hurley Girly made a pfft with her lips. “Your dad’s an asshole.”

  “They prepared me before I came.”

  “Baby,” Dipity leaned forward, “ain’t nothing can prepare you for this place. I don’t care if you were a Navy SEAL, a ninja, or a damn rocket scientist.”

  “Although that helps.” Hurley Girly patted Sarah’s knee.

  “My turn,” said Dipity. “Who won the election?”

  “Who cares?” Ava said.

  “Hey,” Dipity slapped Ava’s chest with the back of her hand – it seemed every woman here was left-handed. “You got your question. I can ask whatever I want.”

  Ava gave her the finger.

  “You mean the president?” Sarah asked.

  “Yeah,” said Dipity. “I don’t care about the other people.”

  “And we ain’t got all night.” Hurley Girly wiggled her tongue between two fingers.

  Sarah shuffled an inch or so away. “Griffin won again.”

  All of them groaned.

  “Lena’s going to be pissed,” Ava said.

  “What do you expect?” Dipity shook her head. “Crime is probably so low and shit’s probably cheaper to buy now, they’ll keep voting in anyone who’s pro-shipping.”

  Hurley Girly bobbed in agreement. “Yeah, they think they sent all the criminals out here. But they just ended up electing them instead.”

  In her mind, Sarah laughed. Even in the deepest reaches of space, people liked to get on their soap boxes and talk politics.

  “OK,” Dipity said. “It’s Sterling’s turn.”

  Sterling, the one against the beam, made a few motions and gestures with her hands. Seeing her sign was like watching a courtesan dance in an Arabian palace thousands of years before. The beautiful flow of the fingers, the elegance of her dark eyes to inflect the words. After she finished, Sterling leaned back again.

  “The war is the same thing as always,” Sarah answered.

  Sterling grinned and the others were clearly surprised by Sarah’s comprehension.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Dipity said.

  “We were going to have one of our dwellers teach you to sign,” said Ava. “But I guess that’s one less thing to worry about.”

  When Sarah had said the war was “the same thing as always,” these women knew what she meant. The people on TV repeatedly informed the viewing public that the United Continent of North America remained strong, and their unwavering faith and patriotism inspired their men and women fighting on the front lines. Every report was of a victory. Sarah couldn’t remember ever hearing of defeat on any scale. But if that were so, then why were they still fighting? Wars eventually ended – never mind that they were always resurrected in a different form.

  “Sometimes I’m glad to be away from all that bullshit,” Dipity said.

  “My turn!” Hurley Girly bounced. She had to take a few breaths and collect herself into a more serious tone. “Are you into girls?”

  Sarah had been expecting that one, but it still surprised her. “I…”

  “You don’t have to answer that,” Ava said.

  “Nuh uh!” Hurley Girly shouted. “She had to answer all your boring questions. So, Pao, what do you say?”

  They all stared at her. Sarah wasn’t sure if she understood the question. What did that have to do with anything? But Hurley Girly was sitting awfully close to her and had been overtly invading of her personal space. Sarah had just thought it a quirk of her personality.

  “I…” Sarah’s mouth moved but nothing came out. She didn’t want to offend any of these women. Her mother had told her to find a group and fit in. Safety was in numbers. But she was who she was. “I’m not into anyone.”

  Hurley Girly crinkled her brow and Dipity almost fell over laughing.

  “Satisfied?” Ava asked Hurley Girly.

  “She’ll have plenty of time to think about it out here.” Hurley Girly leaned toward Sarah. “It’s not like there are any boys to confuse you.” With that, she rolled away and stood beside Sterling.

  Sarah swallowed. Her parents hadn’t prepared her for this.

  “Some stuff you need to know,” Ava said. “We’ve got this truce.”

  “Bullshit,” Dipity said.

  “Things are a lot calmer now, even though most of the shippees who come get eaten. Before the truce, we were all on the menu and had to fight for every shipment. To keep the peace, there are things you can’t do. First thing, you can’t raise your right hand to a member of another gang. Might as well practice being a lefty so you won’t screw up on accident. We all wear these.” Ava showed Sarah the top of her right forearm and pulled back the sleeve of her shiny black jacket. Attached to Ava’s arm was a hunk of metal with lines of glowing blue light circulating inside. It looked like an oversized watch combined with an archer’s bracer.

  Sarah glanced at the others and saw they brandished their own arm accessories.

  “Rangs,” Hurley Girly said.

  Sarah wanted to ask why they were called that but quickly remembered rule number one. She did blink in confusion and tilt her head.

  “You flick your wrist down,” Dipity demonstrated with her left arm, “and this ball of energy shoots out, blowing through just about anything. Bounces off the glass and comes back like a boomerang. We just shortened it to rang.”

  “Pretty cool, huh?” said Hurley Girly.

  “But like I said,” Ava returned her sleeve over the rang gun and the others did the same, “the truce guarantees you won’t ever use it. And a lot of bitches here deserve to get shot.”

  Dipity hummed with approval. “Amen.”

  Sarah’s words shot out before she could think. “Shouldn’t I practice in case?”

  So much for following a simple rule. Sarah could have kicked herself.

  Ava grinned. “You manage not to piss us off before then, we’ll take you to see Grindy and then practice anything you want.”

  “Yeah, anything you want,” Hurley Girly said.

  “I mean shooting and riding.” Ava glared at Hurley Girly. “Grindy’s still keeping Loveless’s…” Ava cleared her throat. “Our other cyclone.”

  “That’s those kickass motorcycles we rode here on,” Hurley Girly said, ignoring Ava’s visual reprimand. “In case you didn’t pick that up.”

  “You lucked out, Pao,” Ava said. “Don’t shit on this opportunity. Plenty of sheilas have tried to be one of us. If you can’t hack it in the DOFL, you’re out on the street. A dweller forever. And don’t think they’re are all kind-hearted. They’d sell you to the Amazons for half a manna loaf if they could.”

  Sarah’s head began to ache, hollow and distant. What a strange place, with strange names for everything and the people just as appropriately odd. Her overflowing mind must have shown on her face.

  Ava sniffed. “That’s enough for right now, don’t you sheilas think?”

  “Sheila?” Sarah asked.

  “Yeah,” Hurley Girly said. “You know, like a rad chick, a ride-or-die sister. A sheila.”

  Sterling signed, A lot of Australians were shipped here in the beginning.

  “We don’t want to fry her brain before the big test next week,” said Dipity.

  Sarah widened her eyes and breathed in more sharply than she’d have liked. They all laughed, even Sterling, whose laughter sounded more like a television having its mute button turned on and off repeatedly.

  “She’s fucking with you,” Ava said. “Welcome to the Daughters of Forgotten Light.”

  “There is one thing,” Hurley Girly said. “Call it an initiation.”

  They all nodded, trying to hold back their smiles.

  Sarah just wanted to go to sleep and wake up somewhere a little less da
rk, but took Hurley Girly’s bait and asked, “What kind of initiation?”

  Chapter 5

  Lena Horror had the tenth floor all to herself. She didn’t much care for heights, but the long window gave her a terrifically wide view of… well, not much besides the neighboring buildings, where a few dweller lights thrummed in the dark. But she’d be able to see any orange wheels headed their way if that’s how it would play out.

  How could she have let herself get so crazy out there on the streets? The stupid Amazon bitch hadn’t even shot her rang. And now she was a dead stupid Amazon bitch.

  Exactly, she told herself. You did something before she had a chance to blow your head off.

  Lena had kicked her boots off to try to relax, but the hard glass floor chilled her feet like always. It would have been better to leave the boots on, but some habits die hard.

  She’d begin to form a plan in her head, but it would turn to shit and she’d have to start all over.

  There was a knock at the door behind her and Lena sighed. It was Sarah Pao. Lena knew before she even turned. None of the other Daughters would have bothered knocking, not even Sterling.

  “I’m kind of busy right now, Pao.” Lena continued to stare out at the city.

  “They told me to come to you.”

  “Look, I really don’t–”

  Sarah stood in the doorway naked, not a scrap on her. She draped an arm across her breasts and stretched the other arm down to cover the rest. Sarah stared at the glass beneath her, shivering. To someone unused to it, the floor must have felt like ice.

  “What are you doing?” Lena asked.

  “I’m here to pay you.” She looked like she was vomiting the words. “For saving my life.”

  Lena’s laughter ripped through the tension in the room. Jolting, Sarah looked up with watery eyes.

  “This is a new one,” Lena said. “Which one of them put you up to this? I bet it was Hurley Girly.”

  Sarah nodded and dropped her head again. Lena guessed the only thing worse than the embarrassment of offering up your naked body was to have it turned down, a one-two punch of humiliation.