ABANDONED
Auri’s robotic knee caught on the hatch opening as she slammed onto the floor of a shuttle. Birdie yelped in pain but was quick to scramble away as Malachi landed in the spot where she had been. Auri rolled to avoid being crushed by his legs. She shifted to her knees, securing her disc into its harness before she accidentally sliced off a finger.
“Go!” Malachi shouted to the pilot, staggering to his feet. He winced and brought a hand to his ribs. “Their ship will be coming in hot now that they have something to hunt.”
Auri had just managed to crawl to her feet when the shuttle took off, the force hurling her back as the hatch door closed. She pressed against the far wall and gawked at the pilot. Katara huddled over the controls as Malachi flung himself into the chair beside hers.
He turned back to Auri. “Aurelia, you’re going to want to buckle up. This piece of kuso might not have fancy thrusters, but she can weave through Medea’s canyons even better than the wind.”
“You’re forgetting who’s driving her,” Katara said. The lights on the front of the tiny shuttle illuminated a sprawling canyon a klick away. Katara sped right for it.
Auri hurried forward and commanded Birdie into the seat behind Katara. The dog loped up and Auri rushed to loop the seatbelt through the harness one-handed. Birdie’s tail wagged as if the insane circumstance was just another joyride back on Rokuton.
“Aurelia, what the hell?” Malachi started, turning to her. The roar of engines made his head snap back to the control panel. A red dot blipped to life a thumb-length from a black speck on the screen. “Katara, kick it up a notch. They’ve locked on to us.”
Auri threw herself into the last available seat. She’d just secured the belt across her chest when the shuttle lurched forward. They plummeted into the canyon in a hurtling nosedive. Auri’s hair flew above her head while her stomach performed nauseating flip-flops. She clapped a hand over her mouth to hold back a scream.
The bottom of the canyon approached with dizzying speed. On the dashboard the distance calculator whirred. One hundred meters. Fifty meters. Thirty-five meters.
“Katara!” she shouted. “Pull up! Pull up!”
Katara’s grip on the controls went white-knuckled, but her face didn’t betray any anxiety. On the proximity screen, the red dot almost encompassed the black one. The Bleeders were practically on top of them.
“Tell me when,” Katara whispered.
Ten meters.
Auri could only stare in mute horror. She was about to die. These people were insane!
Three meters, two meters, one…
The dots suddenly separated as the red one pulled back.
“Now!” Malachi shouted.
Katara yanked on the controls. The belly of the shuttle skimmed the bottom of the canyon with a grating force that Auri felt through her boots and up her legs.
Katara swore in English and Japanese as she fought to gain separation between the shuttle and the ground. Sparks flew past the windshield, popping in the darkness. With a final tug on the controls, the shuttle rose and shot toward a rock fissure.
Darkness enveloped the vessel as the cave swallowed them. Auri stared at the proximity detector and the single black dot on the screen. Malachi braced a hand on either side of it, waiting. Katara maneuvered the tiny shuttle around stalactites, gaze straight ahead.
After a minute of heavy silence, Malachi let out a breath. “We’re in the clear. Relax, Katara.”
She rolled her eyes. “I am relaxed.” Her voice betrayed no sign of emotion, but she loosened her fingers on the controls, stretching them as if the bones ached.
Auri waited for her renegade heart to return to the safety of her ribcage before she spoke. Even then, her words sounded raspy and faint. “How far does this cave go? Won’t the Bleeders just wait for us?”
Malachi turned around to look at her, hair a tangled mess. His eyes still gleamed with a feral wildness that sent a pulse through her. “This isn’t a cave, DISC agent. Medea’s canyons are full of manmade tunnels that the Air Command used to practice drills, before the criminals kicked them off their base. This one goes on for a few klicks and will spit us out far away from the canyon. And the Bleeders.”
Auri wondered for the first time what branch Malachi had served in. Every citizen was required to spend one year in basic and another in the service. The universal test, the ASVAB, determined an individual’s branch based on intellect and potential. This man was obviously smart and level-headed, plus he had knowledge of local training routes. Maybe he’d been in the Air Command. Somehow, though, that conclusion didn’t seem to fit Malachi.
She released a breath and sank into the torn seat cushion at her back. Birdie panted and yawned beside her. “It’s okay,” Auri soothed, stretching over to smooth an ear that had been bent back.
The darkness around the shuttle was so complete, the tunnel so soundless, that Auri lost track of time. Adrenaline and disbelief still pounded through her veins. Why weren’t Bleeders mentioned in basic? Case after case stood out in her mind in sharp detail. Not just the brutal deaths of the victims, but those who had been found guilty of the cannibalistic crimes. According to the files, citizen after citizen had been arrested, by police or DISC agent, and put to death.
Hiroki’s final words rose in her mind, ghost-like and haunting: “They should’ve killed me. Monsters hiding inside human flesh.”
An icy fist clenched around Auri’s heart. She sucked in a breath. Hiroki’s family, the entire population of Uma District, who knew how many more… They hadn’t been killed by unhinged humans after all.
The existence of the Bleeders changed everything. When these monsters roamed the galaxy, why were innocents being executed—murdered—for crimes they so obviously didn’t commit? What in the hell was the Federation doing? Did the GIC know?
And the most terrifying question of all: Where did Bleeders come from?
She reached into her cargo pocket and removed the earring. The lighting in the shuttle was dim enough that she couldn’t make out the intricate details on the leaf or the flower. Who did this trinket originally belong to? Twice now she’d endured the despair—and the incapacitation—of those bodiless screams. What were they from? A memory? A hallucination?
Her mind felt like it was a swirling void. The tidy little galaxy she’d imagined for herself, already splintered from the Flesh Market, had cracked a bit more at the edges.
“Are you going to tell her?” Katara’s voice intruded on Auri’s thoughts. “You couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity.”
She looked up. “Tell me what?” Silly question. There were so many things that she wanted Malachi and Katara to tell her.
Malachi frowned. “You make it sound like I intentionally had Bleeders attack us.”
“When that mafia captain directed our Little Robot to the abandoned FOB, you knew what would happen. They only send people out there to disappear. Yet you didn’t stop her.”
Auri’s nose crinkled both at little robot and Katara’s implication. “You knew that man sent me off to be… to be eaten and you didn’t stop me?”
Malachi didn’t answer at first. He stared out the windshield at the illuminated tunnel as it twisted and backtracked. He let out a slow breath and swung the seat so he faced Auri. He released the harness across his chest. “I didn’t know Bleeders were the cause of the disappearances. I had my suspicions, but…”
Auri reached for her own harness, anger a hot pressure under her skin, but his next words stopped her.
“You needed to see Bleeders for yourself or you wouldn’t help me.”
Her brows furrowed. “Help you?”
He leaned forward, fingers clasped together as if he was praying for her understanding. “Aurelia, Bleeders are a whispered threat on the rim, a story. People disappear all the time and the Fed doesn’t blink an eye. No one on the other side of Krugel’s Curve has even heard of them. But before tonight, I’ve watched them kill, devour, and decimate.”
He swallowed hard, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “For years I’ve been searching for proof of their existence. The Fed covers up every single attack and I’ve been…” His fingers knotted into tight fists. He let out a slow breath and met her eyes. “And I need to know why. Two years ago I got close. I discovered the existence of files containing the truth about the Bleeders. Unaltered police reports, why Roanleigh’s terraforming failed and how it relates to where the Bleeders come from… But the files are restricted and protected against any remote access.”
“Roanleigh? How could that have anything to do with Bleeders? And what does that have to do with me?” Auri asked, voice small. The maniacal glint in Malachi’s eye had intensified as he spoke. He seemed obsessed with his mission of revealing the truth. Almost to the point of insanity. Then she remembered the gravestone back on Kaido. For him, the Bleeders’ attacks were personal.
“I don’t know how Roanleigh’s terraforming is related. But the files will give me the answers I need. The only way to retrieve the files is to access them at their source, the storage facility on Harlequin, Aurora’s moon. I never thought I stood a chance of getting in… Until I met you.”
Auri’s eyes widened in understanding. The lush moon Harlequin had a single building: the Spire, a maximum security vault where every shred of information created by the Federation was stored. The Tech Towers, a set located on almost every planet and habitable moon throughout the galaxy, pulled their data from the vault. But only to a point. The Fed—the GIC himself—occasionally restricted access to certain files. Those classified as restricted could only be retrieved by physically entering the vault.
And only one person was allowed access: the General-in-Chief.
Years ago, the GIC had broken countless protocols and taken her inside.
The day had been warm and sunny. She’d just turned seven years old and was about to be released from the hospital after a year relearning everything that made her human. The GIC ordered a tech officer to program her barcode with the special security clearance.
“I want you to understand the seriousness of what I’ve done,” the GIC said to Auri. “The responsibility and trust that comes with it. That’s why I’ve taken you here.” Then he took her down into the icy depths of the Spire.
The basement itself was a massive warehouse of darkness, so big Auri couldn’t see the boundaries of it. Bulbs set into the floor along pre-determined pathways were the only source of light, and they only lit the path ahead, not the rest of the room. The ceiling itself almost seemed to disappear into the darkness above. She shifted closer to the GIC.
He had chuckled and placed a hand atop her head. “Information comes to the vault in all shapes and sizes. The room is big enough to accommodate the grandest of ships to the smallest of floppys and the equipment needed to process it into a storable format. Nothing to fear down here.”
Auri nodded but didn’t dare move away. The warehouse-type room was empty except for a wall at the far end with a metal sliding door and barcode scanner fixed next to it. Beyond it waited the vault. It still stood out in childlike detail in her mind.
Inside the vault was a forest of floor-to-ceiling server towers that a user could plug into. An enormous screen hung in the center of the space with a small control panel underneath. The GIC fiddled with it as she stood beside him. She’d been amazed by the beauty of the vault, the way the obsidian server towers shone as electricity and information pulsed through them.
The GIC loaded a personnel file on the screen and told her to look.
She recognized her picture, but it took her long minutes to read the information below it. When she did, she dropped to the ground at the GIC’s feet in a submissive bow, her forehead pressed against the chilly floor. Tears leaked from her organic eye as she sobbed, “Thank you, sir. Thank you for adopting me.”
Auri frowned at the memory and ran her fingers over the tattered barcode on her forearm, still nestled in its sling. She shook her head at Malachi. “I had access to the vault once, but they removed it as soon as I left.”
“I believe that the information is still there. Each GIC has a unique code that isn’t changed until he retires or dies. I want to try to reactivate yours.”
The pieces of Malachi’s plan shifted into place, all except one detail. “My barcode is destroyed. How did you know who I was? How did you know the GIC took me into the vault?”
This time Katara answered. “I recognized you. Malachi thought you were an agent who might give us better intel on the Fed.” She pushed a button that set the shuttle on autopilot but didn’t turn to face Auri. “I saw your face on a short news clip about a mission on Babbage. It was a small story, but you’re the GIC’s adopted daughter, so you received about five seconds of momentary fame. Or infamy, it seemed.”
The drones by The Avenue… Auri had thought they were more interested in Tanaka Hiroki’s suicide than her. Apparently, she was wrong.
About so many things.
“When Malachi first brought you in,” Katara continued. “We checked out the dormant capabilities in your torn barcode.” She paused for a beat. “I was like you, once.” She pulled something from a strap on her belt and flipped it. The object was black, the frame shaped like a rectangle with the bottom piece missing, a metal grip positioned toward the top.
“Like every Ancoran,” she said, “I served my two years in the military. But instead of joining a typical branch, the MPB recruited me and I became a Dispatcher.” She caught the object around the grip. A black laser blade shot out from the top, about as long as Auri’s hand.
Auri leaned forward in admiration. She had never seen anything like the weapon. She knew only vague details about the MPB trained assassins; the Dispatcher division was the most secretive of all the sub-branches of the MPB.
“They named me after my weapon of choice, the katar, and unleashed me on renegade citizens.” She continued flipping the weapon—the katar—around with practiced ease like it was an extension of her soul. “One day they sent me after a man who had escaped Fed custody and was spreading negative propaganda. They wanted him dead without fuss. Just before I was going to kill him, he started telling his story. I spared his life, left the Dispatchers, and decided to join his crew on a temporary basis.” With a flick of her wrist, the blade blinked out and she sheathed the weapon back into her belt. She looked over at Malachi. “But I always complete what I start. So I’ll still kill him someday.”
“Luckily for me, someday wasn’t today,” Malachi said with a serious tone.
Auri’s eyes widened. “What about your story convinced her?” How did he even trust her to be on his crew knowing she still planned to shove her katar in his back whenever she felt the slightest inclination?
“That’s not important.” Malachi waved her question away. “Will you work with us, Aurelia? Will you help us find the truth?”
Auri didn’t answer. Going solo to delve into suspicious cases was one thing. Joining a crew intent on breaking into a secure government facility? If caught, she would be worse than court-martialed.
She would be executed.
Even more terrible than both punishments was the knowledge that she would be betraying the GIC. He had healed her, opened his home to her, and supported her.
Could she turn on him?
The Bleeder’s snarl echoed in her ears as if the creature lurked just behind her, its clotted blood oozing onto her shoulder. When Auri brought the cannibal cases to the GIC, he’d had the opportunity to tell her the truth. Instead, he used his position to command her to acquiesce to his and Captain Ishida’s lies.
So many people had died. Auri had nearly been killed over a threat that the Fed was desperate to cover up.
And she wanted to know why.
She rolled her shoulders back, turning her spine into iron, her resolution to steel. “Malachi.”
“Yes?”
She sucked in a breath, meeting his eyes. “If we’re going to be working together, I’d like you to call me Auri.”