Gods of Risk (7 page)

“Big Dave! Hey,” Steppan said. “Heard about your placement. Good going, cousin.”

“Thanks,” David said, keeping his voice low. “But look, I need a favor.”

“Sure,” Steppan said.

“You have lab time?”

“More time than sleep,” Steppan said ruefully. “But you’ve got placement. You don’t need to scrounge for lab hours anymore.”

“Kind of do. And I could use an extra hand.”

“How long are we talking about?”

“Ten hours,” David said. “Maybe a little more. But some of that’s waiting, so you can do your own stuff too. And I’ll help with your work if you help with mine.”

Steppan shrugged.

“All right. I’ve got hours tomorrow starting at eight. You know where my space is?”

“Do,” David said.

“See you there,” Steppan said and dropped the connection. So that was the first part. David’s mind was already leaping ahead to the rest. He had enough tryptamine to build from, and the catalysts were always easy. What he didn’t have was sodium borohydride or amoproxan in anything like the volume he’d need. Closing his eyes, he went through the inventory of his secret locker, thinking about each reagent and what he could gracefully change it into. Carbon double bonds cleaved, ketones formed, inactive isomers were forced into different configurations. Slowly, certainly, a clear biochemical path formed. He opened his eyes, jotted down a quick flowchart of the reactions, and built a wish list. When he was done, he switched his hand terminal over to the main distributor’s site and ordered the reagents he’d need with immediate delivery to Steppan’s lab. The total bill was enough to clean out his secret account, but that was fine with him. He’d never cared about the money.

When his hand terminal chirped the morning’s alarm, he’d managed a two-hour nap. He changed into clean clothes, ducked into the bathroom to wet down his hair and shave. His mind was already three steps ahead. His hand terminal chimed with breaking news, and he almost dreaded to look, but for once it was something good. Eight people had been arrested in connection with the pressure loss on the tube system and were being actively questioned about the bomb in Salton. While David brushed his teeth, he watched the newsfeed play. When the scroll of mug shots came, he had a moment’s anxiety—
What if Leelee was one of them? What if that was what Hutch meant by her getting political?
—but none of the faces was familiar. They were young people, none of them over eighteen, but well-worn. Two had black eyes and one of the women had been crying. Or else she’d been teargassed. David dismissed them.

“Where are you going?” his mother asked as he walked, head bowed and shoulders hunched, for the door.

“Friend needs help,” he said. He’d meant the lie that Steppan needed an extra hand at the labs, but halfway to the lower university, he noticed that by not elaborating, he’d sort of told the truth. The fact was weirdly disturbing.

The day was a massive cook. With the two of them in the space, it was crowded, and Steppan, sleepless, hadn’t showered recently. Between the chemical vapors that the fume hood didn’t whisk away and the stink of adolescent boy, the heat of the burners, and Steppan’s constant, nearly intimate presence, the day passed slowly. But it passed well. Steppan didn’t ask what David’s experiment was, and during the quiet times, David ran Steppan’s datasets and even pointed out a flaw in the statistical assumptions he was making that made the final data prettier when he corrected it. When the early afternoon came and they were flagging, David measured out a small dose of amphetamine and split it between them. When his mother requested a connection, he didn’t answer, just sent back the message that he’d be home late, to eat dinner without him. Instead of the usual indirect disapproval, she sent back a note that she supposed she’d have to get used to that. It left him sad until the timer went off and he had to cool the batch and add catalyst and the work took his attention. There was a real pleasure to the work, something he hadn’t felt in years. He knew each reaction, each bond he was breaking, each molecular reconfiguration. He could look at the milky suspension, see a subtle change in the texture, and know what had happened. This, he thought, was what mastery felt like.

The last of his run was finished, the powder measured out into pale pink gelcaps and melted into sugared lozenges. His satchel was thick with them and heavy as a bowling ball. At a guess, he had the equivalent of his father’s retirement account on his hip. The public LEDs were dim as he walked home. His eyes felt bloodshot and gritty, but his step was light.

Aunt Bobbie was in the common room, the way she always was, doing deep lunges and watching the monitor. A young woman with skin the color of coffee and cream and pale lips was speaking seriously into the camera. A red band around her had SECURITY ALERT HIGH scrolling in four languages. David paused. When Aunt Bobbie looked back at him, not pausing in her exercises, he nodded toward the screen.

“They found plans for another bomb,” Aunt Bobbie said.

“Oh,” David said, then shrugged. It was probably better that way. Let security focus on the political intrigue. It just meant there’d be fewer eyes looking at him.

“Your mother’s asleep.”

“Where’s Dad?”

“Nariman. Work emergency.”

“All right,” David said and headed back to his room. Aunt Bobbie hadn’t noticed the bulk of his satchel, or if she had, she hadn’t mentioned it. With his door safely closed, he checked the time. Late but not too late, and between the late afternoon amphetamines and the excitement and anxiety, trying to rest wasn’t an option. Now that he had the product, all he wanted to do was get rid of it. Get it all away from him so that no one would stumble across it, get this all over with. He pulled out his hand terminal and put through a connection request to the contact Hutch had given him for emergencies only. He waited. Seconds stretched. A minute passed, and the tight feeling of panic grew in David’s gut.

The screen jumped, and Hutch was there, scowling into the camera. He was naked from the waist up, his pale hair messy. The hardness in his expression was clear, even through the connection.

“Yeah?” Hutch said. It was a noncommittal greeting. If security had been watching over David’s shoulder, they wouldn’t even be sure that he and Hutch knew each other.

“We need to meet,” David said. “Tonight. It’s important.”

Hutch was silent. A dry tongue ran across the man’s lower lip and he shook his ragged head. David’s heart was thudding like little hammer blows against his rib cage.

“Don’t know what you mean, cousin,” Hutch said.

“No one’s listening in. I’m not busted. But we have to talk. Tonight,” David said. “And you have to bring Leelee.”

“You want to say that again?”

“One hour. The usual place. You have to bring Leelee.”

“Yeah, I thought maybe you were giving me some kind of order there, little man,” Hutch said, his voice buzzing with anger. “I’m going to tell myself that you burned this number because you got a little drunk or some shit. Out of my deep fucking kindness, I’m going to pretend you didn’t forget yourself, yeah? So you get yourself back to bed and sleep until you’re sober.”

“I am sober,” David said. “But it has to be tonight. It has to be now.”

“Not going to happen,” Hutch said and leaned forward to shut off the connection.

“I’ll call security,” David said. “If you don’t, I’ll call security. I’ll tell them everything.”

Hutch froze. Sat back. He pressed his hands together palm to palm, index fingers touching his lips like he was praying. David squeezed his hands into fists, then released them, squeezed and released. An uncomfortable creeping moved up the back of his neck and onto his scalp. Hutch drew in a long breath and let it out slow.

“All right,” he said. “You come to me. One hour.”

“And Leelee.”

“Heard you the first time,” Hutch said, his voice cool and gray as slate. “But anything smells like a setup, and your little girlfriend dies first. You savvy?”

“You don’t need to hurt her. This isn’t a setup. It’s business.”

“So you say,” Hutch said and cut the feed. David’s hands were trembling. He shouldn’t have said that about going to security, but it was the only leverage he had. The only thing that would make Hutch listen. When he got there, he could explain it all. It would be all right. He stuffed the hand terminal in his pocket, stood silently for a moment, then shifted the wall to the still from
Gods of Risk
. Two men facing each other with the fate of everything in the balance. David lifted his chin and picked up the satchel.

When he came into the common room, Aunt Bobbie frowned.

“Going somewhere?” she asked.

“Friend,” he said, shrugging and pulling the satchel closer to his hip. “Just a thing.”

“But it’s here, right? In Breach Candy?”

A new tickle of anxiety lifted the hair at the back of his neck. Her tone wasn’t accusing or suspicious. That made it worse.

“Why?”

Aunt Bobbie nodded toward the monitor with its red border and earnest announcer.

“Curfew,” she said.

David could feel the word trying to get into his mind, trying to mean something that he didn’t let it mean.

“What curfew?”

“They put the whole city on first-stage lockdown. No unaccompanied minors on the tube system or service tunnels, no gatherings in the common areas after seven. Doubled patrols too. If you’re heading out of the neighborhood, you may have to send your regrets,” she said. Then, “David? Are you okay?”

He didn’t remember sitting down. He was just on the kitchen floor, his legs folded under him like some kind of Zen monk. His skin was slick with sweat even though he didn’t feel hot. Hutch was going to meet him and he wouldn’t be there. He’d think it was a setup. And he’d have Leelee with him because David had told him to. Had insisted. Threatened even. Without thinking, he pulled out his hand terminal and requested a connection to Hutch. The address came back invalid. It had already been deleted.

“David, what’s the matter?”

She was leaning over him now, her face a mask of concern. David waved his hand, feeling like he was underwater. No unaccompanied minors. He had to get to Martineztown. He had to go now.

“I need a favor,” he said, and his voice sounded thin and strangled.

“All right.”

“Come with me. Just so I can use the tube.”

“Um. Okay,” she said. “Let me grab a clean shirt.”

They walked the half kilometer to the tube station in silence. David kept his hands in his pockets and his satchel on the other side of his body so that Aunt Bobbie might not see how full it was. He hated this. His chest felt tight and he needed to pee even though he didn’t really. At the tube station, a red-haired security man in body armor and carrying an automatic rifle stopped them. David felt the mass of the drugs pulling at his shoulder like a lead weight. If they asked to see what was in the satchel, he’d go to prison forever. Leelee would be killed. He’d lose his place in Salton.

“Name and destination, please?”

“Gunnery Sergeant Roberta Draper, MCRM,” Aunt Bobbie said. “This is my nephew, David. He just got his placement, and I’m taking him to a party.”

“Sergeant?” the security man said. “Marines, huh?”

A shadow passed over her face, but her smile dispelled it.

“Yes, sir.”

The security man turned to David. His expression seemed friendly. David tasted vomit and fear at the back of his throat.

“Party?”

“Yes. Sir,” he said, “yes, sir.”

“Well, don’t do any permanent damage, son,” the security man said, chuckling. “Carry on, Sergeant.”

And then they were past him and into the tube station proper. The white LEDs seemed brighter than usual, and his knees struggled to support him as he walked up to the kiosk. When he got the tickets for Martineztown, Aunt Bobbie looked at him quizzically but didn’t say anything. Fifteen minutes to Aterpol, then a change of cars, and twenty to Martineztown. The other people in the car were grubby, their clothes rough at the edges. An old man with an exhausted expression and yellowed eyes sat across from them with a crying infant ignored in his arms. An immensely fat woman in the back of the car shouted obscenities into her hand terminal, someone on the other side of the connection shouting back. The air smelled of bodies and old air filters. With every passing kilometer, Aunt Bobby’s expression grew cooler and less trusting. He wanted to be angry with her for thinking that he wouldn’t have friends in Martineztown, for being prejudiced against the neighborhood just because it was older and working class. It would have been easier if she hadn’t been right.

At the Martineztown station, David turned to her and put his hand to her, palm out.

“Okay, thank you,” he said. “Now just stay here, and I’ll be right back.”

“What’s going on here, kid?” Aunt Bobbie asked.

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it. Just wait for me here, and I’ll be right back.”

Aunt Bobbie crossed her arms. All warmth was gone from her face. A bright flare of resentment lit David’s mind. He didn’t have time to reassure her.

“Just wait,” he said sharply, then spun on his heel and hurried off. A few seconds later, he risked a glance back over his shoulder. Aunt Bobbie hadn’t moved. Her crossed arms and disapproving scowl could have been carved into stone. The LEDs of the tube station turned her into a black silhouette. David turned the corner, and she was gone. His satchel bounced against his hip, and he ran. It wasn’t more than fifty meters before he was winded, but he pushed on the best he could. He didn’t have time. Hutch might be there already.

And in point of fact, he was.

The crates had been rearranged. All them were stacked against the walls, packed tight so that no one and nothing could hide behind them. The only exception was a doubled stack standing to Hutch’s left and right like bodyguards. Like the massive sides of a great throne. Hutch stood in the shadows between them, a thin black cigarette clinging to his lip. His yellow shirt hung loose against his frame, and the muscles of his arms each seemed to cast their own shadows. The brushed black pistol in his hand made his scars seem like an omen.