The Lost & Damned 1 Read online

  Hurt that she would think him so callous, or that he could have any kind of disregard their almost two decades long relationship, he sets her free. Bristling with anger, she walks away from him and slips upstairs to the apartment. There, she finds Alice lying on the bed, her eyes already puffy and red from sobbing.

  Sitting down on the bed beside her, Silver tenderly moves stray strands of tear-soaked hair away from her face. “Did you eat today?”

  Alice shakes her head.

  “Well, are you hungry?” Silver presses.

  More head shaking.

  Then, “I don’t like them.”

  Silver rolls her eyes. “You’ve only just met them.”

  “They hate me.”

  “They don’t understand you.”

  “They don’t want to try. I can tell.”

  Silver, tired and frustrated, pinches the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger—a trademark Maydevine gesture that’s rubbed off on her in moments of irritation. “You have to try and see what these people mean to me, Al. They’re like family.”

  “Especially Alexander King?”

  Silence.

  Silver wasn’t expecting that, and her first instinct is to deflect. “It was war, Alice. You have no idea what that’s like.”

  To press her point, Silver recounts a story from her time in the Hunter Division, during the Second Reclamation. In her story, she tells of Alex and the rest of her unit beating a Chimera to within an inch of its life while she watches.

  The animal struggles to get to its feet, only to be beaten back down to the floor. Frightened and angry, the Chimera’s spinal muscles contract, engorging its spinal erectile tissue with blood. This horripilation is a warning: back off.

  The fierce spinal display failing to have the desired effect, the injured creature chatters its teeth and huffs air through its nose, trying desperately to appear threatening.

  Finally, Silver steps in, tying the Chimera’s jaw shut and wrapping the rest of the rope around its neck, securing it to a pillar in the corner of the room. She stands just out of its reach, letting it claw and scratch desperately at the empty air between them.

  Calmly, she takes a canister of butanol and pours the entire can over the Chimera. As her peers watch eagerly, she tosses the empty canister away and lights a match.

  Swoosh! Up in flames.

  Smiles upon their faces, they let the Chimera burn alive, shrieking in pain. The fire soon eats through the rope and sets the animal free, and it stumbles across the floor, dying.

  A shot.

  Silver shoots the creature at Alex’s feet, amidst cheers from the rest of her unit …

  Back in the apartment, Alice is scowling at Silver. “That’s grotesque.”

  “I’m trying to illustrate a point.”

  “What? That you’re all a bunch of disgusting, cruel, violent murderers?”

  “That we shared the best and the worst of everything,” Silver defends herself. “We were paving the way for future generations of humans to live in peace and security—we were the chosen ones. Sure, some of our methods were elaborate. We were cocky, and fearlessly reckless. The necessary kill became the final act in a game of unnecessary torture—”

  “You’re not really selling it,” Alice interrupts her.

  “The conditions were intense. Poor performance could mean death—either yours, or someone else’s. Just one slip of concentration, or a moment of hesitation, and a split second of doubt could incur the ultimate cost: a human life.”

  Alice continues to look blank, so Silver gives up.

  “I don’t expect you to get it.” She drops back against the bed. “We were soldiers. There’s no other bond like it.”

  “And Alex? What about your bond with him?”

  Epic deflection fail.

  “It was a long time ago.” Silver sighs.

  Silence.

  Alice doesn’t press her further. Instead, she rolls over and lays her head upon Silver’s chest, snuggling in to her.

  For the first time, Silver feels like the name almost fits.

  Traitor.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Morning After

  At seven a.m., Silver stands in the kitchen cleaning a Colt M4 Carbine on the draining board. Alex, still unshaven, his hair ruffled from sleep, appears in the doorway.

  “Please, tell me I’m not hallucinating. That’s fresh coffee I smell, right?”

  Silver nods her head toward a pot of freshly brewed New World coffee, still cranky from their disagreement the night before.

  Desperate for a shot of laboratory-synthesized caffeine, Alex rubs his hands together and pours himself a cup of coffee, thankful for small pleasures.

  Silver finishes with the M4, fits it back together in seconds, and leaves the room in silence, taking with her the M4, an M203 under barrel grenade launcher and the custom HK USP that never leaves her side.

  Sensing that her anger toward him hasn’t yet abated, Alex hesitates for a moment before following her into the office. By the time he reaches the doorway, she’s already on the verge of beating the computer with a stick.

  She’s trying to add data to a map of the city, but the computer’s not cooperating. At every key stroke, the map—displayed on a large plasma screen fixed to the wall—is defying Silver’s best attempts to manipulate it. Every time she types in a piece of information, a warning icon pops up.

  Leaning casually against the door frame, Alex smirks to himself. “Having an issue there?”

  Silver tries entering the information again.

  Another warning icon.

  “This computer is a big piece of shit.”

  Alex moves in close over her shoulder, his unmistakable scent of cigarettes and cologne triggering a rapid tsunami of emotions and memories within her. He remains oblivious, and diagnoses her computer problem instantly.

  “Program doesn’t accept caps.” He hits the ‘caps lock’ key. “All set.”

  “I suck.”

  “Move over.”

  Silver obliges and he slides into her chair, scanning the paper file she was reading from.

  “You’re marking the murder sites?”

  “I thought there might be a pattern. You can finish it?”

  “In my sleep.”

  Alex adds data to the map and it appears on the screen instantly. Outside the room, a loud crashing and banging means that Jax is up and about. She appears in the living room with a cigarette pinched between her lips, carrying a crate of home brewed beer in one hand and a half-filled backpack slung across her shoulder.

  “I brought my own brand of refreshments.”

  Silver visually inspects the piss colored liquid with more than a little skepticism, watching a pubic hair float on the surface of one bottle. “How thoughtful of you.”

  Jax dumps the crate down on the table and cracks herself a pube-free bottle while Alex frowns judgment at her, checking his watch.

  “You don’t think it’s a little early for that? It’s barely even seven.”

  Jax checks her own watch and shrugs. “Depends on your point of view.”

  “How’s that?”

  She lies down on the tabletop, beer in one hand and cigarette in the other. “If you don’t sleep, the night never ends.”

  “That’s great.” Silver frowns. “You’re drunk and sleep deprived.”

  Her tone implies that the former would be acceptable, were it not accompanied by the latter, and that makes Alex nervous. Silver’s always had a tough time with moderation, and he’s always done his best to keep her on an even keel.

  A leaf bug crawls out of Jax’s hair and scampers off across the table.

  “I can still beat the shit out of things,” she assures Silver.

  To prove that point, she slams her bottle down on top of the leaf bug.

  Squish!

  The cigarette back between her lips, she relaxes again and closes her eyes. “Wake me up when you need something blown to hell.”

&n
bsp; Red enters the room from the stairwell and negotiates her way over to Silver, barely using her cane. Dylan shuffles in behind her, with two heavy hold-alls slung over each shoulder. His entrance not so well perfected, he stumbles into the room, knocking things over left and right.

  Alex helps him unload.

  “Didn’t anyone tell you? There was no need to bring the kitchen sink, there’s one here already.” He reconsiders that. “I mean, whether or not it’s hooked up to the main water system is another matter, but I can definitely verify that the sink itself is intact.”

  Silver punches him in the shoulder. “There’s water, asshole. Warm and cold. Just don’t drink anything that’s not filtered.”

  “Cholera? Again?”

  Silver shakes her head. “Salt. Most of the water in the Fringe is siphoned directly from the ocean, so unless you’re a tropical fish, it’s gonna taste pretty foul.”

  “You’re not hooked up to the Sentinel District hydro facility?”

  “Are you joking? The water pipes run beneath the Narrows and they burst over a decade ago. Without our own desalination facility, like the one in the Sentinel District, all we have here is what nature gives us. We collect what rainfall we can from the water towers, but it’s never enough to satisfy the entire Fringe population.”

  She turns her attention back to Dylan and Red. “Seriously, dude. We’re not going into hibernation. How can you possibly need that much shit?”

  Red shrugs and takes a seat at the table. “I don’t like to be caught off-guard.”

  Jax puts her cigarette out on the table top, immediately lighting another. Lack of respect for other people’s property is just one of her many character flaws, albeit one of the least harmful.

  “Don’t tell me that’s a bag full of cunt plugs?” She scowls. “How goddamn long do you think we’re gonna be here for?”

  “You can leave any time you want,” Silver reminds her. “Only then, the next time you see me, you’ll be taking the long drop into the cold water.”

  That shuts her up.

  If she didn’t already know that Silver had been earning a living as an Enforcer, she’s just been succinctly re-educated.

  Alice, lingering in the periphery until now, finally makes the decision to brave the room. “You don’t have to be so mean, you know.” She glowers at Jax. “It’s not a very attractive quality.”

  “Neither is Chimeran DNA, you disgusting, hybrid bitch.”

  Grinning, she tries to take a sip of her beer.

  Smash!

  Broken glass.

  Jax leaps off the table, covered in booze after the beer bottle explodes in front of her.

  Silver lowers her gun.

  Her jaw tight, “Don’t push your luck.”

  Jax flicks her saturated cigarette onto the floor and crushes it into the soiled carpet.

  Dispelling some of the tension, Red cuts in. “Where’s Oz?”

  Alex shrugs, unconcerned. “I don’t think he’s ever been on time for anything in his life.”

  “He probably went out to get laid,” Dylan adds.

  Coming from him, that comment takes everyone by surprise.

  Jax grimaces. “What do you know? You’re, like, eight years old.”

  “I read his file.”

  “Have you ever even had proper sex with a girl?”

  Dylan’s cheeks flush, but he pretends not to be embarrassed. “Yes, and sex is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  That’s ammunition.

  Jax glares at Alice. “Depends who it’s with.”

  Bored by Jax’s acid tongue, Red follows Alex into the office. A moment later, thudding footsteps on the stairs bring Oz into the room. He blasts through the doorway, his hold-all getting stuck in the frame. He pulls it through with a man’s carelessness, pulling a piece of the frame to the floor.

  He looks down at it, then up at Silver. “Do you need me to fix that?”

  Silver shrugs that off with a brief eye roll. “You’re late. We need to get to work.”

  One by one, the Hunters disappear into the office, leaving Alice and Dylan alone. Having only limited experience with girls, Dylan is less than suave and lacks the confidence needed to engage her in anything more significant than a basic how-do-you-do level of conversation.

  “Thanks for sticking up for me,” he mumbles.

  “You’re welcome.” Alice smiles, blushing slightly.

  An awkward silence lingers between them until a tactless Dylan recklessly bulldozes straight through it. “Is it true what Red says about you? That you’re not human?”

  Alice’s sweet smile is gone in an instant.

  Shaking her head sadly, “I don’t know.”

  Dylan doesn’t know what to say next, so he holds out his hand to her. “Either way, it’s nice to meet you.”

  They shake, and the smile returns.

  “You’re not afraid of me?”

  “Not so far.”

  “Then you’re not like the rest of them.” She glances over at the rest of the group. “The Hunters.”

  “Silver takes care of you, doesn’t she?”

  “She does, for now. But I can’t give her what she really wants.”

  Alice looks beyond the doorway into the office, noting the body language between Silver and Alex. Silver finishes posting some of the crime scene pictures onto a pin board on the wall, while Alex inputs the rest of the geographical data into the city map. Words travel back and forth between them in the exchange of an anecdote, or the remembrance of an old story. Here and there they share eye contact, Alex running a hand briefly across her lower back as he assures her of some fact or another.

  Red tests out one of the other computers, running her fingers across a keyboard that has the key functions imprinted in Braille. Beside her, Oz, already bored, uses a flick knife to clean dirt and sex out from underneath his fingernails.

  Before Silver has a chance to intercept it, Jax grabs the police file and begins to flip through the rest of the crime scene photos.

  “Brutal.” She tosses them down onto the desk, revealing them for any eyes that dare to look.

  With perfect timing, Dylan wanders into the room to take a peek and is utterly repulsed. His face loses all of its color, and he looks as though he might vomit.

  Oz watches him for any indication that he might be about to hurl. “Dude, if you puke, I’m outta here.”

  Dylan looks away from the pictures and swallows some vomit. “I’m good,” he lies.

  Ping!

  Alex puts the finishing touches to the map and proudly displays it for everyone to see. “Ta-da!”

  His smile fades when he realizes that there’s no visible pattern.

  “Well, that was anti-climactic,” Silver pouts.

  The murders are scattered, seemingly randomly, throughout the Sentinel District.

  “Perhaps the connection is in the victims, not the locations,” Red suggests. “Do you have their files to hand?”

  “No, but I have Alex.” Silver turns to him. “Would you mind?”

  Alex swivels back to the computer and brings up Omega’s main database. A few passwords and some skillful firewall breaches later, and he’s got full access to the network. In seconds, he pulls up each of the victims’ files on the screen.

  “I can download all these files into a program that’ll search them for similarities.”

  “How long will that take?” Silver leans in.

  “One tenth of a second.”

  “That’s specific.”

  Alex does it.

  “That’s the way I roll, baby.”

  The program highlights areas in the files which are common to all of the victims.

  “Anything?” Red asks.

  Alex scrolls for more. “They all worked for Omega.”

  Unimpressed, Jax lights up a fresh cigarette. “Duh.”

  With lightning swift reflexes, Red swings out her cane against Jax’s neck and pins her down against the desk. Jax tries to force the cane aw
ay, almost choking on her cigarette, but Red is strong and she holds her tight.

  “If you don’t want to help, like she said, you’re free to walk away. You can take your attitude and your warrant, and you can go sign yourself up for enforcement before the day is out. Would you prefer that?”

  Oz steps in, not daring to chastise Red, but eager to keep Jax from blowing her chance to cash in on Maydevine’s generosity.

  “Settle down, J-bird.”

  Red releases Jax and turns away, not aware—or not caring—that Jax flips her off as soon as her back is turned. Rubbing her sore neck, Jax makes a swift exit so as not to get herself into any further trouble.

  “Time for a hard liquor hunt,” she shouts over her shoulder.

  Silver plants herself down on the desk next to Alex, resting her foot on the edge of his chair. Alice keeps a close eye on both of them, and she sees the way Alex looks at Silver when he thinks nobody’s looking.

  Altogether too soon for Silver’s liking, Jax reappears with a bottle of vodka in one hand, and a six pack tucked under her arm. In her other hand, she holds a clear bottle of translucent liquid up to her face, inspecting it. “Is this what I think it is?”

  Silver snatches it from her. “It’s water.”

  “Expensive fucking water.” Jax snorts, glaring at the price scribbled in black marker on the neck.

  125.00.

  Rightfully suspicious, Alice leaps out of her chair and tries to get to the bottle, but Silver’s too tall for her and keeps it out of her reach.

  “You promised!” Alice wails, as Silver pushes her back down into the chair.

  Silver might have the dominant advantage over Alice, but Alex is a different matter. Towering over her by at least five inches, he swipes the bottle from her hand and uncaps it before she has any chance to stop him.

  The smell is instantly recognizable.

  Firewater.

  Silver’s never seen such anger in his eyes.

  “Alex …” She tries to placate him by reaching out to him, but he won’t be so easily manipulated by her.

  He shoves past her and storms into the kitchen, firewater in hand. Leaving the rest of the group confused, Silver dashes after him. In the kitchen, he keeps her at arm’s length while he dumps the firewater in the sink.