First Angels Read online

  Unwilling people. The bartender paused at that statement, and Isavel saw him staring off into space. Perhaps that was it, then. “What does he get in return?”

  “Loyalty - or fear that he’ll expose your snooping and double-dealing. Either way, nobody likes to cross the Mayor, and you can cross him in a lot of ways. He’s been telling people not to join the army, recently - telling us he’s taking care of the ghosts, and that we need to stay put. But it’s not just that - hell, even blocking your windows so the drones can’t look in will get you taken if you don’t smarten up.”

  “Taken?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said.”

  “Taken where?”

  The bartender shrugged, looking away from her and stashing the wine away. “Wish I knew, soldier. Wish I knew.”

  “So he uses people’s fears to control them - to make them come to him for help, and to keep them from getting in his way.”

  “You’d be crazy to fight him. Well, unless you were the Saint Herald, I guess, but I’m guessing you’re not. I bet she’s got better things to do than this.”

  Isavel blinked. Depending indeed. She finished off the wine and bade the bartender farewell, down a fresh hat but with a better idea of what she was going up against. A man who led by fear - so not a real leader.

  As she walked outside, looking up into the sky above the narrow alley, she saw two drones already, and either one of them could be watching her. Or both.

  To hell with it, then. She took a deep breath. The Mayor didn’t want people going out to fight the ghosts, wanted them to keep calm? That was ridiculous. They should be fighting; perhaps they would if they knew the gods wanted them to join the fight. Surely gods overruled mayors.

  She made for the town square again, stepping into the open space. Nobody recognized her here, but they would when she decided she wanted them to. A call to arms - to the people who actually mattered. Not one man with a bunch of drones, but the thousands of people living here who could fight the ghosts alongside them.

  Isavel glowed her skin white, bright white, and called up a shield and sword of white at the same time. And it worked - people turned, they pointed, they called titles at her, they drew closer. She looked up to the sky, at the three drones circling the square, and then to the people around her.

  “People of Hive - I’m here to ask for your help.”

  Chapter 4

  Ada tried to avoid the open sky, but it was a challenge. She shouldn’t be nervous - it was irrational. She had a gun. A shield. Cherry still circled the city, just a cry for help away, and she had a hunch that the Mayor was not in the business of gunning people down in broad daylight. She would survive. She knew, intellectually, that she could handle it.

  But she also knew that he could be watching at any time, and that at night a carrier drone might drop down and scoop her up without warning. And all because of… she hadn’t been careful. She had just wanted information, and instead she had found herself caught up in some kind of ghost infiltration of the city.

  She shook her head, trying to keep those thoughts away. What was gone was gone, and she needed to press on. She always did.

  She had stayed hidden in the basement until sunrise, strategizing with Cherry. Her pilot suit was a dead giveaway at this point, but Cherry had told her it had camouflage abilities. Something like a pathfinder’s skin, apparently. Now that it was daytime, and there was less risk of the Mayor suddenly attacking her, she risked a peek outside from a second-floor window.

  She thought the words out loud in her head, something Cherry called subvocalization. Okay, Cherry, how does this camouflage thing work?

  Cherry’s reply was quick. Call up the hud.

  The what?

  Subvocalize the word hud.

  She ground her teeth, watching people walk freely and unconcerned down the streets, under the watchful eyes of dozens of drones. Okay. Hud.

  Words flashed in front of her eyes, much like they did when she was in control of the ship itself. She sighed - more powers she had yet to unlock. She scanned the few words that were visible until she found one that sounded suspiciously close to what she was looking for.

  Camo.

  Her suit immediately began to shimmer, and a small square in the centre of her vision lit up. Ada’s eyes flicked about in surprise, and every time she looked at something different the suit’s colour patterns changed again. The square also changed, outlining whatever object she was focusing on.

  “What the...”

  Suddenly, she understood what was going on. Wherever her visual focus rested, her suit took on the colour and patterns of whatever was inside that shape in the middle of her vision. When she looked at the sky, the suit went pale blue with wisps of white. When she looked at the ancient concrete, she was a grainy grey. The ancient word Default floated at the bottom of her vision, and when she focused on it, the suit went black again.

  “Holy shit.”

  She peered down to the street level and started looking at people, and to her great wonder, the square flickered to an outline of the human shape, and her suit changes its colour and patterns to match whatever those people looked like. Not only that, but the suit’s strange fabric, grown as it was from the metal spine in the back, expanded and contracted and grew to match the texture and general shape of what she was looking at.

  “Cherry, this is really, really cool.”

  The only other word in her field of vision was Confirm , and she knew what that meant. Ada found a pattern she liked on a man walking past, a sleek white suit with a reddish-pink twirl that reminded her of cherry blossoms, and subvocalized Confirm . The square and words disappeared, and the colours stuck.

  Cherry, I love you. Do you know how this technology works?

  The principles are available in my internal encyclopedia, yes.

  So much lost knowledge, all of it packed onto a starfighter for seemingly no purpose other than for small chance the pilot might be curious. Ada marveled at it all.

  She walked down the stairs and out onto the street. She kept an eye on the sky still, but she wasn’t as afraid - the splash of colour on white was basically the opposite of the suit’s old black, and its look and feel were completely changed. She would just have to keep her head pointed down.

  Ada?

  The voice that buzzed in her head, this time, was not Cherry’s - it was Zhilik’s. She spun around in shock, looking for the source, but she didn’t see the outer’s hunched, furry form anywhere nearby.

  Cherry, are you relaying his voice?

  Yes.

  Okay, um. Ada didn’t know how to direct her mental thoughts towards Cherry or Zhilik separately. Can he hear me?

  I can hear you, Ada.

  Well this is awkward. Where are you?

  Zhilik sounded hesitant. We’re approaching the city now.

  Ada frowned as she turned towards the docks, keeping out of sight of the sky whenever possible. A quiet sense of dread crept along the back of her spine. We? Who’s we?

  A human turned up this morning asking to see you. I decided to let him come along, since he seemed both harmless and familiar with you. His name is Tanos.

  Ada felt like she had just been punched in the gut. Tanos? Back? She had abandoned him weeks ago.

  Then she realized, with some trepidation, that she had abandoned him. He was not going to be happy to see her. Or might, perhaps, be inordinately happy to see her. Either way, he brought with him a conversation she absolutely did not want to have.

  Gods, Zhilik. Okay, I’ll wait for you near the docks. I can’t be seen in the city. I’ll explain.

  Very well.

  She would have to send them back, wouldn’t she? She had already made it impossible to do anything in this city, and at this rate she would end up getting those two killed. She would have to send them back. It would be easiest that way. Everything would be easier that way.

  As she approached the docks, hiding under one of the towers, she kept an eye out for the hauler. S
he spotted it fairly quickly, and next to it was the hunched, hooded shape of Zhilik, drawing some suspicious stares from the humans. Next to it, she realised with despair, was indeed the very same Tanos she had run out on in the middle of the night, in a village far to the north of Campus.

  I’m under the brown tower to your right . Her subvocalization carried, and Zhilik looked over in her general direction, a communications device held to his ear. He beckoned Tanos along with him, and soon enough they were within earshot.

  She didn’t let him start. “Tanos, what in the worlds are you doing here?”

  “I’m surprised you remember my name.” Tanos sounded bitter. “You certainly seemed to have forgotten me . In the middle of nowhere . Without warning.”

  Zhilik looked somewhat taken aback, glancing between the humans with flatted ears. “Is there a problem?”

  Ada shook her head. “Yes, I don’t understand why he showed up at Campus - today, of all days!”

  “Hey!” Tanos exclaimed. “I’m right here.”

  She sighed, and her eyes bounced around a dozen inconsequential things on the ground around the docks. Eye contact just made this worse. “Look, I just wasn’t comfortable with things.”

  “You never told me.”

  “There’s nothing you could have done about it, I -”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Damn it, Tanos - look, you’re perfectly nice, and I did appreciate your help and all, but I…”

  She looked at him, trying to piece it together herself. He was perfectly nice, and she liked him in a superficial way, but that liking disappeared when she started looking deeper. She couldn’t figure out why, but she had no obligation to force herself.

  “Why did you follow me after I ditched you?”

  Tanos threw up his arms. “What the hell else was I supposed to do? My village was wiped out, remember? You were there. You saved my life and dragged me onto an island. I had nobody else left! I spent weeks wandering that damned island looking for these outers before I saw that ship flying off. What choice did I have?”

  “I didn’t save you because -” She stopped herself, and took a deep breath. “Okay, I can see why you’re frustrated. But this is a highly sensitive mission -”

  Zhilik cut in flatly. “I am missing something.”

  Ada shook her head, eagerly turning to his alien face instead. Finally, an opportunity to change the subject. “You are! Zhilik, there are ghost agents in the city, there’s an army at the gates, and the Mayor almost kidnapped me. And thinks I’m a ghost.”

  Zhilik flatted his ears backwards again. She had come to learn this was a sign of concern. Tanos, meanwhile, looked bewildered. “Woah, what’s going on?”

  Ada sighed. “The Mayor controls the drones here, and he has information on ancient technology I need to fix. I need to break into his home and find its location.”

  “Why do you need to fix it?”

  “Because the afterlife is broken, and I need to restore it. To make the ghosts stop invading our world.”

  “The afterlife? How do you know it’s broken?”

  “The gods told me. While I was on the ring.”

  “What?!”

  She ran a hand through her hair, and smiled. “Also, I am now Arbiter of the Gods. Speak my name and title with the appropriate amount of awe and reverence, please.”

  Tanos didn’t seem to have a response for that one. Her smiled faded into a huff.

  “Fine, silence is an acceptable substitute for reverence. Now - oh gods, this is the important bit. You two can’t be seen with me in this city.”

  Tanos raised an eyebrow. “And yet here you are, standing with us.”

  “Right. Yes, well, we’re not under the sky. I’ve changed clothes - sort of - so I think the drones might not recognize me, but the Mayor did get a look at me last night. I need to hide while I figure out how to break into his tower, and you two, well, I don’t want you getting caught.”

  Zhilik nodded. “So you have managed to turn Hive into hostile territory in less than a day.”

  “Yes. Basically. Are you judging me?”

  “I am.”

  Tanos nodded eagerly. “Yeah, me too.”

  “Gods, look, I this wasn’t the plan!” She raised her palms in frustration. “I have Cherry on standby to pick me up at a moment’s notice if things go sour. Get out of the city now and I’ll meet you somewhere else. How about, uh, the shore opposite the docks?”

  Zhilik didn’t sound convinced. “And then?”

  “Then we go out together to find and fix that damned control centre.”

  “While fighting any ghosts we find.”

  She paused. “Yeah. Fighting off the ghosts. You know, if we run into them. Priority is fixing that ancient tech.”

  Ada looked back into the city, towards the tower that housed the Mayor’s secrets.

  Tanos cleared his throat. “Do you need any help?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  He was insistent. “You need to break in somewhere, right? We could help you set up a distraction.”

  She was about to dismiss Tanos out of hand, but he had a point. There might be some value in a distraction of sorts, but could she guarantee that they wouldn’t get captured? Did she need to? Really, the Mayor seemed interested in capturing rather than killing. Tanos and Zhilik might get captured, and if it came to that she could hop into Cherry and blast the Mayor to hell and free them. It might be worth the risk.

  She nodded, slowly. “Okay, yeah, I might be able to use a distraction. Do you have any weapons?”

  Zhilik looked edgy. “I was provided with two guns before leaving, yes. But I must confess, I am… nervous about firing one, especially on humans. We have yet to test your claim that the gods will treat us as their own.”

  “So? Just shoot something.”

  “The gods once used watchers or godfire to kill outers who attacked humans. It is not something I would like to test.” Zhilik’s ears twitched at the suggestion.

  Tanos stood a little taller, as though trying to show off, but he still looked boyish. “Well, I can shoot.”

  Ada nodded. “Fine. I can communicate to you through Zhilik’s comm, and Cherry can find you, so we won’t need locator sigils or anything. If I need you for anything, I’ll let you know.”

  She looked up at the slowly greying sky.

  “Keep an eye out for drones, you two, especially if night falls. If the Mayor’s seen you with me, he’d make his move at night. Don’t be under open skies after dark.”

  Zhilik glanced to Tanos. “Very well, we will investigate the city on our own. Be careful, Ada.”

  Tanos looked silently at Ada, with a measure of hurt. She turned away and stalked back into the city, keeping her face down for the most part. She hadn’t expected to see him here - or anywhere, ever again. She had been perfectly happy to close the book on him, like everyone else that was gone from her life. What was she supposed to do now?

  What if other people started turning up? There were some people she never wanted to see again.

  She shook her head, trying to clear it. She had a job to do. She needed to get into the Mayor’s residence. The drone control mechanism, whatever it was, would be some kind of machine. A computer, the outers called them. If she could access it - of course she could - then she would have the information she needed to find that control centre.

  First, the approach. She knew there were underground access tunnels - stealthy, invisible to the drones. There were side entrances - far from the public eye, smaller and easier to handle in a fight. There was a main entrance, wide open and guarded, that would probably not be worth the trouble, especially on a busy evening.

  Alternatively, she could blast her way into the building using code. She was vaguely surprised the building showed no signs of ever being attacked in such a way in the past. Perhaps no previous coder had been bold enough - she liked the idea of outdoing them.

  Ada leaned against a wall in an alcove, e
ating a piece of fruit and watching the main entrance to the mayor’s tower. She saw a number of carrier drones flitting in and out of the lower levels of the tower, many of them seemingly with wooden crates. The main entrance too was abuzz, and it seemed like an event was taking place, or at least being prepared. The celebration, for the newly arrived army. She needed to know more.

  A couple was walking past on the street, well-dressed and extroverted from the looks of them - surely they would know something about such an event. Ada stepped out of the alcove and addressed them.

  “Excuse me - do you know when this thing is getting started?”

  They glanced at her, and the man looked her up and down, eyes lingering disapprovingly on the splash of red and pink that split the otherwise white suit in half. He almost looked like he was sneering, and Ada’s gut immediately reacted. To hell with him.

  The woman was much more amiable, and as far as Ada was concerned, far too attractive for the man she was with. “It’s at sundown. Army folk, and people the Mayor likes, or wants to like. I heard the Herald will be there as well!”

  The man raised an eyebrow, his expression even more hateful. “It’s invite-only, of course.”

  The woman ignored him. “The Herald was here this morning! I can’t believe we missed her. Did you see her?”

  Ada had no idea who the Herald was. It wasn’t really her concern at the moment, though. She smiled with pursed lips, feigning disappointment. “I didn’t. So it’s invite only? That’s a shame, I guess, but thanks for the tip.”

  “Don’t worry, the boys and girls from the army want to come in and get to know the locals too. The taverns will be full! I’m sure it’ll be a good time all around.”