The Woman They Kept (11 page)

Leanin's face was hard, her jaw
clenched. “What do I care about a body lying in the dirt?
I've got better things to do with my time, and so do you. We have
to find your fiance.” She started walking off.

“
Just give me one minute,”
Gideon called after her. He knelt down by the body. “I'm
sorry,” he said quietly. There was nothing more he could
think to say. He kissed the tips of his fingers and placed them on
her forehead before he walked after Leanin.

...

They headed west on their
motorcycles for half a day before the rain started up and they were
forced to stop. A cave placed high up on a hill provided shelter,
it was small but it kept the rain from them. There was a faint
smell of sulfur in the air that stung their nostrils, but the cave
was dry and warm, large enough for their tents and their
motorcycles. Leanin pulled out her tool bag and went to work
adjusting things on her bike.

“
Have you ever been to
Imperium?” Gideon asked. She nodded, her hands busy on the
bottom of her engine. “What's it like?”

Leanin's eyes were a thousand
miles away and Gideon wasn't sure that she was going to answer him,
a wrench dangled loosely in her hand. “It's a big place, like
most of the cities, and there's a few good people and a whole lot of
bad ones. I didn't stay long. A guy helped me find someone I was
looking for, and then I was gone.”

The rain pattered off the rocks
outside and the sound of rolling thunder crashed some distance away.
A rock was jutting into Gideon's lower back and he shifted to try
and find a more comfortable position. “Why aren't you looking
for Jenny any more?”

Leanin dropped the wrench and
pulled out her knife. Her mouth set in a hard grimace, she began to
dig at her nails. “Fucking hangnails, only way to deal with
them is to dig 'em out.” She leveraged her knife against her
hand and part of the nail broke off and up, flicking blood onto her
face.

“
Who was Jenny and why
aren't you looking for her anymore?” Gideon repeated.

It was a long time before she
answered. Blood trickled down her hand and she pulled out a small
cloth to wipe it away. When her finger was clean she picked up the
wrench and kept working. “She was my sister, and I'm not
looking for her anymore because I already found her.”

Gideon didn't know exactly how
to phrase his next question, so he just spat it out. “Is she
dead?”

“
She wasn't when I found
her,” Leanin said in a flat tone. The muscles on her right
arm tensed up as she worked at a particularly stubborn bolt. A sigh
of satisfaction came from her lips as it loosened.

“
I think we should have
burned Arisa, it wasn't right for us to just leave her there for the
dogs.”

Leanin reacted in an instant,
slamming her wrench down deep into the ground. “Why do people
have such reverence for the dead? They'll bend over backwards for a
corpse. All the important parts of that girl went away, Gideon.”

They didn't speak for the rest
of the night, each wrapped in their own thoughts, taking turns
watching the mouth of the cave to make sure no one had followed
them.

...

Imperium took its name to heart,
styling itself as the largest city ever held under a dome, embodying
the term, 'empire.' The buildings seemed designed with giants in
mind, with large arches and towering heights. The roads twisted and
curved like arteries flowing through a body, never simple and
straight but rather shooting off in all directions. The citizens
acted like they knew the city was not designed for them, hurrying
along with their heads bowed, never looking up at the staggering
tops of the buildings they lived in. Gideon felt trapped,
suffocated, as though the walls on each side inched in every time he
looked away from them.

They passed sitting children
begging for coins, each missing an arm or a leg. The kids put their
deformities forward, thrusting stumps at Gideon until he felt
compelled to flip a coin into the middle of them.

“
You shouldn't pay,”
Leanin said. “Their parents do it to them, they cut them or
burn out their eyes so that people will give them more when they
beg. The more you pay, the more incentive for future parents to do
that to their children.”

Gideon sighed and they continued
walking. Following Leanin, he found it amazing that anyone could
keep a clear head of where they were going in that labyrinth of
buildings.

Soon they were on a street that
felt familiar, women were walking around with scant amounts of
clothing on, trying to catch everyone's eye, ducking into back
alleys with those they could. Shadows squirmed and moaned in the
dark corners of the street. They asked a few women if they knew a
man named Malakir. It was not much to go on, but Gideon had
searched with less. The women all shook their heads at both the
name Malakir and the picture of Rolanda.

Hunger forced them to stop at a
small cafe so they could eat sandwiches that were falling apart with
grease. “I think I know a man who will help us,” Leanin
said. “It's somebody that helped me last time, guy's name is
Masumoto. He may not even still be in town, but I'd rather not keep
putting it out on the street that we're after Malakir, just in
case.”

After lunch they took an
electric tram to another part of the city. The seats were
uncomfortable, made of hard bits of plastic, and there were windows
to other compartments and out to the city. Gideon soon lost all
interest in the buildings whizzing by, they all looked the same and
watching them gave him a dizzy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

...

“
Leanin Bibi, I heard you
were in town,” Masumoto smiled as they entered his house. He
sat in a wheelchair, his legs small and falling to one side, his
upper body large and well toned; he motioned them into his home with
hands wearing fingerless gloves. The house itself was small, with
dust starting in a line just above head height. Plates with half
eaten food sat on tables, there were no chairs. It was dark, the
shades were all drawn, the only light in the place coming from a
command center of computer monitors.

Leanin stuck her head out of the
door before shutting and locking it. “You heard? Who did you
hear from?”

Masumoto wheeled his chair into
the center of the monitors and rubbed the side of one
affectionately. “Kristina here told me. You guys registered
under your own names. Gutsy, quite gutsy. Though I really don't
think you'll have to worry the thirteen being computer literate.”

Gideon swallowed hard. He had
left his pistol in his bags with the motorcycles. The thought left
him feeling cold. Of course, he did always have the knife in his
boot.

Masumoto smirked in his chair,
greasy black hair falling into his eyes. “Leanin, tell your
friend here he doesn't have to kill me, I haven't sold you out and I
don't plan to.”

Gideon's mouth dropped and he
stepped back a pace. Leanin laughed. “Masumoto has that
affect on people. He just thinks fast and well, don't worry.”
She grabbed at one of Masumoto's hands and he brought it to his
lips for a kiss.

“
The thirteen are the most
prevalent clan in Imperium,” Masumoto said. “Our pretty
lady here doesn't usually come for things on the up and up.”
He was still holding her hand, for some reason it seemed obscene to
Gideon, so he looked away. “Leanin, when are you going to
marry me?” Masumoto asked.

She laughed and beamed down at
him. “You always were a charmer. You know I can never stay
in one place for too long, though. I get itchy feet.”

Gideon cleared his throat. “So,
Masumoto,” he began.

“
Mas, please. I insist.”

“
Mas,” Gideon
continued. “What is it you do here?”

The wheelchair bound man smiled
largely, positively beaming. “Can't you tell? I fight crime.
I am Imperium's protector, rolling over criminals with my armored
wheelchair of justice.”

“
Mas,” Leanin
interrupted. “We need a favor.”

He adopted a look of faux
seriousness, the corners of his mouth slightly upturned. “Yes,
anything for my beloved. I will be all business.”

“
His name is Malakir,”
Gideon said.

The change on Masumoto's face
was dramatic. The flush fell off of his cheeks and his eyes grew
somber. “I know who you're talking about,” he said in a
whisper and then began typing frantically at Kristina. After a
moment he tilted a monitor toward them. “He's a rich prick,
works with the thirteen, but as far as I can tell I don't think he's
one of them.”

Malakir stared back at them from
the monitor. The face itself could be considered handsome, it was
well proportioned and the cheeks had a high nobility about them, the
chin broad and thick, his hair long blonde and pulled back into a
ponytail, but there was something off about it. The eyes were cold,
icy blue with flecks of grey, the teeth sharp. Everything was too
hard, too tight.

“
You want to be careful.
Malakir's very dangerous, I've been trying to find out more about
his business for months,” Masumoto said.

“
You have?” Gideon
asked.

“
I told you," he
said, smiling, "I fight crime. From what I learned, Malakir is
very high up in the organization, but there's someone else even
higher, and I can't seem to find any details about that guy.”

“
We don't need to know
about that guy,” Leanin said. “Can you tell us where
Malakir works?”

“
27 south plaza.
Thirteenth floor,” Mas read to them.

“
Which room?”
Gideon asked.

He cocked an eyebrow at him.
“The whole floor.”

Leanin nodded her head.
“Thanks, Mas. I owe you one.”

“
I maintain that our
marriage would be a happy and fruitful one,” Mas said as he
showed them to the door.

Leanin bent down and kissed him
on the cheek. In a rare moment of tenderness, she said, “I'm
not sure I deserve that life yet.”

As they walked out of the home
Mas stopped Gideon. “You be careful with that one. Nothing
but heartache down that road.” They smiled and waved goodbye,
walking towards the electric tram. “Sometimes that's the best
feeling in the world, though,” Mas added quietly to himself
before shutting the door.

When they had all left a shadow
stirred a few doors down and a man stepped out, walking with slow
and sure footsteps toward Masumoto's house.

...

The section of city that they
traveled to looked nothing like what Gideon had expected. He had
expected well cleaned streets and posh buildings with people waiting
outside just to open the door. Instead the neighborhood looked like
a rotting mouth, the buildings broken and jagged teeth. Bits of
newspaper blew along the ground and were picked up for kindling by
people warming themselves at a burn barrel. They walked past a
couple pushing syringes into each other's emaciated arms.

“
I thought this Malakir
guy would be in a rich part of town,” Gideon said. “This
seems to be the slums.”

The light was fading fast on the
day, what was left reflected off the chip-toothed broken windows on
the buildings around them. “The address should be through
here,” Leanin said and they ducked down an alleyway.

Halfway down Leanin stopped her
walk and held up a hand. “Something's wrong,” she said.
Gideon looked around, it looked like every other alleyway he'd been
down. There were broken beer bottles crunching underfoot and the
acrid smell of stale urine everywhere, the windows were boarded up
all around them. Trash cans stood outside of locked doors.

“
What do you mean?”
Gideon said.

“
It's not natural. The
fire escapes are all pulled up, boards over the windows. This alley
was made like this.” Leanin crouched down onto the balls of
her feet. “I don't like it. There's only one entrance and
one exit, everything else is blocked off, and we're in the middle."

“
Leanin, you're being
paranoid. Nobody knows we're in town.” Gideon pulled her
forward. With a loud click the electric lights of the city all
turned on, all except for the ones in the alley they stood in.
Night was fast approaching, the shadows growing long around them.
“Alright, you may be on to something,” he said quietly.

An intense blue light arced
behind them accompanied by a high pitched crackle. It buried itself
in Leanin's side and she gave off a choked scream before falling to
the ground in a heap. Gideon swung wildly into the darkness,
feeling a satisfying connection of fist on flesh before the little
lightning arc stabbed into him as well. The pain was immediate and
immobilizing, every muscle in his body contracting at once and his
brain lighting up before everything simply shut down.

...

When he woke his body was
wracked with pain. Every muscle ached and his head was throbbing
with the relentless beat of his heart. His jaw hurt, when he tried
to speak he found that there was a hard rubber ball gag strapped
into his mouth. The taste was terrible, like sweat and blood and
medicinal rubber. He was in a concrete room with no windows nor
furnishings except for a metal toilet and a drain in the center of
the floor with dark stains all around it. He was stripped naked and
tied to a metal chair, everything was cold, his bare feet going numb
against the concrete. Thick ropes were strapped across his chest
and legs, cutting off the circulation, his arms bent around and
bound behind his back.