The kid says nothing as I turn away from the path to the cache. Guess she’s learned I don’t like talking my plans through. Or maybe she’s so in sync with the land already that she feels it, too. Either way, we skirt around the mesa until the ghost truck comes into sight, a gleaming spear of silver laid still against the ground, as if in truce.
Alpha sits on the roof, idly kicking her heels against the side of the autonomous truck. The dust clinging to her black leggings makes her look bruised and mottled. I showed up here in similar clothes, years ago. This land, it digs in. Digs deep. You either bend to blend with it, or it kills you. Pac-At never quite figured that out, it seems.
She can’t see us, not yet, but she lifts her head up anyway, tracking a low ridge that runs along the base of the mesa with her sharp, blue eyes. We’re under cover, and we’re moving quiet across the scree, but she’s been waiting a good long while now, and whether she likes it or not, she’s picked up the rhythm of the land. Knows when something changes, if not exactly what that change is.
“I told Perez you wouldn’t go straight to the cache,” Alpha says. Her voice is clear and high and congenial. The kind of voice an old friend might use to greet you after too long apart. She snorts. “Do you know what she said? She told me ‘operative behavior is predictable.’ Can you believe it? After all of this?”
There’s a hollow in the ridgeline that fits me just right, if I go down on my knees, and so I sink myself into it and gesture, silently, for Omega to go around, get on her sister’s flank. Her eyes are huge but she nods, all business, just like she was at Ratta’s camp. O’ course, once she’s out of sight, I slip from the nook in the ground and circle back the way we came, edging up for Alpha’s back.
But not before I put my bag in the hollow, push open the narrow opening to reveal a mound of dark metal oblongs, no bigger than my thumb. Perez could have rescinded my ability to activate the bugs, but she either forgot about them, thought I’d already used ’em up, or figured Alpha and Omega could handle it. All wrong assumptions. Pac-At’s off their game, lately. Suits me fine.
“So where is she?” Alpha asks with a slight ratcheting of her voice. “Where’s my sister?”
I’m almost on her three o’clock now, so I pause, steadying myself against a chunk of sandstone. Omega surprises us both by keeping quiet.
Red fury bruises her cheeks and Alpha’s long-fingered hands clench the edge of the truck’s roof, latching on like claws. Her hair swings down across her cheeks, the mirror of Omega’s, and her lips curl back in a sneer.
“You like it here, don’t you? I knew you would. From the moment they briefed us about this ass-lick of a territory you’ve been moony-eyed over sand and tumbleweeds. They wanted you to love it, Om. Wanted you to be so sucked into this hell-bitten landscape and its simple people that you’d stick. That when that other operative finally fell, you’d pick up her rifle and keep on. They forgot how big a heart you have. How slow you’ve always been to squeeze the trigger, to sink the knife. But I didn’t.”
Alpha pushes to her feet, chest out as she crows from the top of the truck. “I didn’t do this to kick sand in Pac-At’s eyes, Om. I did this for you. I brought those mercs out here so you could know what it was like to really fight. So they could open the killing maw I knew was in you, waiting, dormant. You and I, we aren’t people. We’re barely sisters. We’re weapons. I saw you at Ratta’s camp. Saw what you can do, when pushed. It’s beautiful, Om. You were made for triumph. Help me. Help me destroy this place—salt the land and poison the wells—and they won’t have a reason to leave you out here to rot.”
I can’t see the kid, she’s too well hidden, but I can practically feel the pressure of Alpha’s words building against her, pushing her to say something, to deny what she is. What Alpha had drawn out of her by turning the mercs against the camp.
Trouble is, it’s all true. The kid had come alive on that battlefield, whether she liked it or not. She couldn’t help it. Joy of violence was hardwired into us as surely as breathing. For most operatives—for people like Alpha—that was just fine. Your conscience was cut out along with your old eyes. You did what Pac-At told you, and you enjoyed it, and that was the end of that.
Except, for a few of us, the proverbial scalpel had slipped, and our conscience wasn’t entirely scoured after all.
“She’s never going to be what you want her to be,” I call out to keep the kid from talking first. “Never gonna be your dark mirror.”
A smile cleaves Alpha’s face as she spins around, facing the landscape my voice came from. “Delta,” she says, and the word slams me in the chest, takes my breath away. It’s been so long, and the moniker sounds so impossibly alien. Delta was a different person than Riley, and I feel her watching me across the arc of time, arms folded, curious, because the Delta who walked out to this land would have put both the kids in the ground without a second thought.
But Alpha’s still talking. “You’ve been very disobedient. The ledgers, they just don’t add up. You say you get the cargo back, and you do, for the most part, but you’re picking and choosing, aren’t you? Letting some scraps slip through your fingers. That wasn’t the deal. Pac-At won’t stand for it.”
A defensive urge boils through me. I want to shout her down, to tell her she’s wrong. That some cargo goes missing that can’t be recovered, that’s true, but it’s no negligence of mine that causes it. I’ve got these people so damn scared they can hardly whisper my name, and the trucks are being hit less and less every week.
But that’s all just talk. And talk ain’t what I’m made for.
I slide a hand up, press a tiny button on the side of my goggles, half forgotten about. I can hear them before I see them, drones the size of cockroaches buzzing into the air, their gunmetal bodies sleek and deadly. Alpha hears them, turns on her heel, eyes wide with a mix of fear and anticipation. I get it. My own heart’s pounding with excitement.
She throws a hand out as soon as the metal insects swarm, their buzzing shifting to a deep drumbeat, a steady roll of thunder. As she’s focused on the swarm, I’m moving, springing along the low ridge, trusting to skill and scrub to keep me hidden. I can’t see the impact, but I can hear it, and it brings my head up even as I scramble to a stop behind a ledge of shale.
The swarm tears into her in a shower of blue sparks. Electronic shielding flickers along her skin, a patchwork of crackling energy strained to its limits as it struggles to overload the bugs before they can bite deep. Pac-At weapons. Pac-At defenses. At first I think it’ll be a wash, the two canceling each other out, but then Alpha’s shoulder dips and her hips twist, a sharp hiss escaping her. The blood follows.
Score one for the robot roaches.
Alpha’s body flares blue as the net pumps out one last charge. The insect swarm falls to the ground, metal bodies plinking against ancient stone, and it takes me a while to think what the sound reminds me of—rain. She drops from the roof, disappearing from my view. Her laughter, joyous and shrill, echoes through the thin arroyo.
“I knew you wouldn’t disappoint,” she says, and if there’s pain in her voice, I can’t hear it.
The arroyo leads me on a slight curve, around the back of the truck, and I let the land guide me, slipping my semiauto from my back. The precision of the rifle won’t work on one of us. We’re too fast. Too unpredictable. I need the spray and pray randomness of burst fire, and the weapon feels light in my hands. Hungry. My palms are cool and dry against the grip and stock.
Alpha shimmers around the edge of the truck, a weapon in her hand I can’t quite see. Everything about her appears indistinct, now. A mirage of a woman netted up in light. Fléchettes fly from her fingertips, biting into the ground in front of me. Answering blades of silver leap at her back, claw through the electronic netting that’s making her hard to see. Omega.
Rage draws Alpha up, makes her head lift high even as she stumbles forward, one hand on the truck, smearing blood as her netting fizzles and pops, blurring her in and out of existence. It’s the clearest shot I’ll ever get, but my finger just won’t pull the trigger, and it has nothing to do with the weight of the draw.
If Alpha can smudge my vision of her, so can Omega. And those knives damaging the netting, those came from behind. It’s firearms 101—don’t shoot unless you know what’s on the other side of what you’re aiming at, and you’re willing to destroy that, too. I put the gun down. Can feel Ma Rickets shake her head at me from miles away, but I’m the one who’s gotta live with what I’ve done, if I live at all.
I’m sprinting across the ground before I can think, the loose rockfall rolling with me, almost springy, eager, as if the ground itself wants to hurl me at the woman who would undo the balance of this land.
We collide and everything becomes desperate grabbing, scrabbling, pain. Alpha’s heel goes out from under her and I twist, taking her to the ground, slamming my knee into her gut. She gasps, body arching upward as the fléchettes in her back dig deeper, pierce vital parts. Blood foams over her lips. The netting flickers, scalding my knee.
My hand’s on her throat. Skin to skin. My palm rests against her collarbone, fingers curling up to feel the heady beat of her jugular. Augmented power crackles beneath my fingertips. Ready. Patient.
Alpha meets my eyes, blue to blue, and I know that the second I let loose, she will, too. She squeezes my bicep with her bare hand, lips curling into a smile that keeps on going as the blood spills past the corner of her lips and draws her grin wider.
“Scared?” she whispers. There’s scrabbling through the rock, someone running, but I don’t dare look away.
“No.” I’m surprised by how true that is. Might be the truest thing I’ve said in a long time. We’re both dying here. Skin to skin, Alpha’s not letting me walk. Mercy’s not in her, and those fléchettes in her back tell her I turned her sister against her, even if Omega was never going to be what she’d wanted. Vengeance is all she has left. With Alpha’s hand on my arm, I think maybe I have a shot at vengeance, too. “Do me a favor.”
She tries to laugh, but the blood catches in her throat, makes her fall into deep, shuddering coughs that drive Omega’s knives deeper. Kid’s close, now. Her shadow reaches across the ground toward us.
“This train takes three hours to get from here to the nearest warehouse,” I say. “I got no doubt in my mind Perez is going to be there for the pickup.” I lean down, make sure only she can hear me. “Make it last that long. I got a score to settle.”
“Deal,” she says.
It doesn’t feel like my fire, when it starts. The rot takes root slow and calm, like it’s shimmying in, pushing its weight around. Getting comfortable in the plasma of my cells. Nausea rolls through me as my skin softens under Alpha’s grip, loosens, peels away in a palm-sized sheet of bruised plum. When my blood comes, it’s black and fetid.
“No!” Omega’s shouting, and I know she’s going to do some fool thing like try to stop me, even though it’s already too late.
Fast as she is, she’s too far. I meet her eyes, just a second, just to say goodbye, I’m sorry, do better, then I grab Alpha so hard about the throat she convulses. My weight and hers, they’re damn near identical, so when I roll I know how hard to do it, how much strength to give.
We tumble into the empty bay of the truck and the sensors in the floor note us, register us. Tell some computer on the devoured coasts that it’d obtained its cargo, as expected, and could now return home. The door slams shut, Omega’s outreaching hand the last thing I see before the dark closes in. Entombs us both.
“You really think you can kill Perez?” Alpha asks as the truck shivers, sliding back along the track, picking up speed so fast I doubt Omega can even see it, now.
Two blue eyes stare at me out of the dark.
“She won’t see me coming.”
All I can see is those eyes, but I imagine she’s smiling as her body relaxes under mine, the tendons in her neck slackening, the rigidity of her muscles fading. Power comes easy to my hands, but I keep my eyes closed, letting her burn in private.
When it’s done, I push myself back until my spine touches the wall and rest my weight there, legs splayed out in front of me, my ruined arm gathered against my chest. The rot trickles down, into my fingers, crawls up my shoulder and reaches across my chest. But it’ll take some time. Three hours, if Alpha judged right, and I doubt that kid would have fudged the margin. At least I’ll be able to take Perez down, before the end. Maybe, when Ma Rickets hears, it’ll make her smile.
A sticky pool spreads out below me, smelling of iron and decay. I tip my head against the wall, close my eyes to conserve my strength. I ain’t stupid. I knew this would all end in blood. Just hadn’t counted on how much of it would be mine.