The Drowned Cities (16 page)

With a sick feeling, she realized that even if she put the knife down and apologized, there wasn’t any going back. She and Doctor Mahfouz stood on two sides now. Pulling the knife had changed everything.

The doctor eased off. “All right,” he said soothingly. “All right. Let’s not be hasty.”

He slowly sat, hands held open and defensive. He looked old suddenly. Old and tired and broken and worn out. Mahlia felt ill. This was how she repaid the man who saved her. No one else had lifted a finger for the peacekeeper castoff, but Mahfouz had stood tall for her. She wanted to cry, but her voice didn’t crack.

“You might as well tell me how to do it right. I’m giving it the meds no matter what.”

“Those medicines aren’t yours to give, Mahlia. There are people who will need those. Good, innocent people. You can still do right by them,” the doctor pleaded. “You don’t have to do this.”

Mahlia rattled the pills in their fancy blister packs. “How many I got to give?”

Mahfouz’s voice hardened. “If you do this, you are no longer my charge. I cared for you as best I could, but this is too much.”

Mahlia felt as if she’d stepped out the window of a Drowned Cities tower, and was plummeting toward the canals. Freefall. Nothing to catch her. Just a hard hit, rushing up.

Part of her wanted to take everything back, to apologize for the knife, for the meds, for everything, as the bond of trust that she’d relied on for so long unraveled.

You in or you out?

Mahlia looked from the dying half-man to the doctor.
Was she wrong? Was she stupid? Fates, it was impossible to tell.

But then she looked again at the doctor’s disappointed expression and she realized it didn’t matter. She’d already chosen, as soon as she’d raised the knife. Old Mahfouz had never hurt anything, and she’d put a knife between them. It was already done. There was no going back. It was like her father said, she was Drowned Cities, through and through. Whatever trust she’d had between her and the doctor was cut now. Cut wide and deep.

“How many pills?”

Doctor Mahfouz looked away. “Four. To start. You’ll need four. For that thing’s body weight, you’ll need four of the blue-and-white ones.”

Mahlia fumbled for the meds and started prying pills out. She’d have to grind them, feed them in water to make the thing swallow in its unconscious state. She wondered if she was in time. Wondered if it would all be a waste.

“Four, you say?”

The doctor nodded, disappointment dragging on his expression. “And then more daily, until they are all gone. Every one of them.”

You in?
she wondered.
You really in?

Yeah. She was in, all right. All in, whether she liked it or not.

O
CHO LEANED AGAINST
a sooty wall below the doctor’s squat, gingerly probing the wounds that he’d resewn himself. The half-man had ripped his ribs up good, but he was coming back together. The new stitches were messy and brutal, but they’d hold. No way these ones would rip out. They hurt, but they were nothing in comparison to the burn of his back.

Twenty lashes from the cane, for screwing up. Sayle stalking up and down in front of the silent soldier boys, saying, “No one fails, ever! No excuses! I don’t care if you’re stoned or drunk or you got your legs blown off or you think you’re the Colonel himself; you keep on soldiering!” And then he’d laid into Ocho.

Van came over and squatted down. “How’s your stitches, Sergeant?”

“Better than my back.”

Van smiled slightly at that. He was a skinny little war maggot, missing his ears and his two front teeth. From what Ocho could remember of the firefight with the coywolv, Van had been steady. Steady enough that maybe he deserved his full bars. Ocho decided he was going to make the boy a private. Give him a chance to really prove himself.

“You took it good,” Van said.

“I been hit worse.”

“Everyone knows it wasn’t your fault. When we found you, you couldn’t even talk.”

Ocho snorted. “Don’t sweat it, war maggot. LT was right. We got to keep discipline. We don’t got discipline, we got nothing. Don’t matter who you are. No one gets a free pass.”

“Yeah, well, you were so stoned you were drooling.” Van hesitated, then said, “LT wants you up top.”

“He say why?”

Van avoided his gaze. “No.”

Ocho gazed up at the torched building. On its top floor, Sayle had ordered an observation platform built. The concrete and iron was all sooty and scorched and the old doctor’s squat was completely burned away, but Sayle still wanted to stand on top of it.

Ocho’s instinct had been to pull out of the whole damn building after what the coywolv had done to them, but Sayle had given him a cold look and said if they showed
they were afraid, then all these civvies in town would start playing them like that castoff girl had done.

Just because Ocho had coddled himself up with a castoff didn’t mean they were going to start sending that kind of message.

So they’d rounded up a bunch of townspeople and put them to work. The maggots had worked damn fast with a gun on their kids.

Now Sayle spent all his time sitting cross-legged on top of the tower, looking out at the jungle, and taking reports from their recon teams as they quartered the jungle, bit by bit, trying to turn up evidence of the dog-face, the doctor, and the castoff who’d done them.

“You need help getting up?” Van asked.

“No.” It was a test. LT liked to test. Make sure troops were loyal. Make sure they had semper fi. No way was Ocho going to cry about climbing a ladder, no matter how much it hurt. He pulled himself to his feet with a grunt. “I’ll do it myself.”

He slowly climbed up the series of ladders to the building’s pinnacle, feeling his stitches tugging, feeling the burn of his back. He hoped he wasn’t doing some kind of new damage, but it didn’t really matter. The only way to survive was to show the LT that he was still loyal, and that he’d do anything for the man. Especially after the caning.

Ocho finally reached the top, gasping and sweating.

Sayle looked up from his maps. Ocho forced himself to
stand at attention. Sayle evaluated him across the short distance. “How are your wounds, Sergeant?”

Ocho stared straight ahead. “Fine, sir.”

“And your back?”

“Hurts, sir.”

“I went easy on you.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Do you remember how we met, Sergeant?”

Ocho swallowed, forcing down memories. “You saved me.”

“That’s right. I saw something special in you, and I saved you. I could have chosen anyone, but I saved you. I gave you the gift of life.” Sayle’s cold eyes narrowed. “And now you give me this…” He trailed off, looking disgusted. “Colonel Stern would never tolerate a failure like that. He’d have your head on a stick. If I were Stern, you would already be a lesson in loyalty.”

“Yes, sir.”

Far off in the distance, the 999s of the Army of God boomed.

Lieutenant Sayle said, “I made you my second because you have never failed me. You’re a good soldier. We all know you were wounded, and drugged by that castoff. It’s the only reason you’re still standing here. But don’t disappoint me again, Sergeant. There won’t be any second chances. Not even for you.”

“No, sir.”

“Good.” The LT waved him over. “Now come here. It’s time we made plans. We have decisions to make.”

Ocho hesitated, trying to tell if he was really off the hook, but Sayle looked up at him, impatient. “I don’t have all day, soldier. It’s time to work.”

Ocho came over and squatted down. “I heard Colonel Stern wants us back at the front.”

“That’s right. The Colonel is finding himself hard-pressed by our enemy’s new artillery.”

“When do we march?”

Sayle’s cold eyes were like pinpricks. He smiled slightly. “We’re not going back.”

“Sir?”

“We’re not going back. We’re staying right here.” He looked out at the jungle. “That doctor and his girl haven’t come back, and I won’t leave until I see them again.”

“They rabbited. No way they’ll come back while we’re around. Might not even come back at all. Jungle’s got them now.”

“We’ll have to give them a reason, then.”

“You want them executed?”

Sayle shook his head. “No, I want to know why they left with all their medical supplies. Most of these civvies, they run with food, or a weapon. But these people took their meds.”

“Meds are valuable. He’s a doctor. The girl’s practically a barefoot doctor herself, even with that stump. I’d take meds, too.”

The lieutenant nodded slowly, but then he said, “You
noticed that when the girl arrived, she was running? Out of breath. Panicked?”

“Everyone’s panicked when they run into us.”

“But she was running before she saw us. We surprised her.”

Ocho suddenly got it. “You think she was running from something?”

The lieutenant nodded. “It would have to be something big, don’t you think? To scare a war maggot like her? Castoff that’s already seen plenty of blood. Plenty of pain.” He gazed out at the greenery below. “I think she saw something very frightening out there.”

“You think that dog-face got its teeth in her somehow?” Ocho couldn’t hide the doubt. “That seems pretty far-fetched.”

“How long have we been together, Sergeant?”

“Years.” Lifetimes.

“Have I ever led you astray? Wasted work on an operation that wasn’t worthwhile? That didn’t take the fight to the enemy, and come back with trophies for the cause?”

“No, sir.”

“I think there are still a few questions worth asking, here in this little town.”

“But the Colonel wants us to head back. He won’t go easy on us if we don’t jump.”

Sayle didn’t say anything.

Ocho tried again. “You really think that dog-face is still alive?”

“I want to see its body.”

“What difference does it make? Colonel doesn’t care.”

“He does, actually. That dog-face survived in the pits for months.”

“Yeah. Epic ring. But we’re dead if we don’t head back to the front. Stern will execute all of us.”

“Stern executes soldiers who fail. It’s one thing to loaf out here when the fighting is there, but this is a different case, and demands different thinking.” The lieutenant shook his head. “And the Colonel rewards results. The UPF won’t be able to hold now that AOG has those 999s. Those cross-kissers will cut more artillery deals, and more scavenge contracts, and the tide will move against us. We’ll lose our access to ammunition and weapons, and we will be forced to retreat. The 999s are changing everything. In another year, we could be as lost as Tulane Company.”

“What’s that got to do with the dog-face?”

“How much do you know about augments… half-men? How much do you know?”

Ocho rubbed his ribs, thinking about how the dog-face had come after him. “All I need to know is that I don’t want to fight one again.”

Sayle laughed at that. “Have you ever wondered why dog-faces haven’t taken over the world? They’re better than us. Faster. Stronger. Many of them are smarter. Perfect tacticians. Built for war, from day one.”

“Oh, you mean they’re war maggots,” Ocho joked.

Sayle smiled. “There are similarities. Trial by fire hardens us all. But I’ll tell you, that half-man should already be dead.”

“I never thought it would beat those panthers.”

“No.” Sayle shook his head impatiently. “Not like that. Most half-men, when they’re trapped, forced to fight for nothing other than survival, they don’t last. They pine for their masters, and they die. It’s a fail-safe. So they can’t be turned. So they can’t go rogue against their wealthy masters. So they can’t raise a flag for themselves.

“The worst nightmare of any general would be an army of augments gone rogue. They are faster, stronger, and smarter than the average human being. If they were independent as well?” He shook his head. “It would be disastrous. And so when they are cut off from their own, or lose their masters, they die.”

Ocho puzzled on that for a little while. “But that one didn’t die.”

“That’s right, soldier. That one didn’t die. It bided its time. It survived for months, and then it escaped, and it tore a hole in us and ours. It’s all alone, but it’s still alive and running.”

“So what do you think you can do with it? It’ll rip our throats out if we find it. Practically did, already.”

The lieutenant shrugged. “Let’s just say that it might have a use.”

“If it’s still alive.”

“It’s out there.” Sayle stared out at the jungle. “It’s out there, and that castoff knows where it is. If we find the girl, we find the half-man.” He looked over at Ocho. “I have a job for you, Sergeant. It’s time for you to redeem yourself.”

T
HE PRICK OF
a needle. A surprise.

Small pain.