The smell of rotting seawater was pungent by itself, but mixed with the crushed herbs in her snorkel it was unbearable. Etienne was busy arguing with the owner of a red rubber dinghy; while he was indisposed, she discreetly moved further down the beach to vomit in peace. She did her best not to puke on the remediating mushrooms cultivated in the mud — her stomach acid would do them no favours.
When she returned, washing out her mouth with a pull of lukewarm water, Etienne had won the argument. He scribbled down an address on Mal’s arm as the boatman sullenly waited on them, and held out a canvas parcel; her hand was halfway across the gap before she recognized the rust-red inlay, and she pulled back from the gun as though it was a snapping animal. “No way.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You scared?”
She rolled her eyes. “I won’t need it,” she said, thinking about all the times she had convinced herself to go vegetarian rather than pull the trigger on a grazing deer. “I’d only miss, anyway.”
He scoffed and shook his head, slinging the holster back under his arm. “I’d make you do target practise when you get back, but if you’ll just waste all my bullets—”
“It’s not like I’ll need to know how to shoot people on Proxima.”
“I wish I could bottle your optimism, cousin.” The boatman loudly cleared his throat, tapping his wrist. “Be safe.”
She clapped his shoulder as she moved past him to climb into the boat, barely sitting down before it lurched into the bay. Its pace was breakneck, engine whining and coughing on its biodiesel fuel, but the water thwacking against the rubber bow was too thick with other foul agents to easily break the surface tension, leaving no white wake on the dark water behind them. Her fingernails dug into the two-by-four bench seat, willing herself not to fall in — half of the bodies that passed through the crematorium were people who had fallen into the contaminated water, often suffocating on fumes before they could drown. Rowan’s pale face flashed through her mind, his eyes bloodshot and lips blue, still smelling of the bottle of whisky they had finished together after hearing that Gwenh’s body would go unrecovered. The boat hit a high and choppy wave, thick droplets of water striking the apple of her exposed cheek; she shrank in on herself and frantically wiped her face clean.
Bath Beach finally scraped the bottom of the hull, and she left a pen-knife, a half-empty lighter, and a bundle of pens on the bench as she staggered onto the shore. She stood there long after the boat spluttered out of sight, feeling the rocks under her shoes and listening to the desperate carrion screaming overhead — she was still a ways from the thick of the fighting, and she wasn’t eager to close the gap. For the umpteenth time today, she looked down at her clothes to ensure she hadn’t accidentally donned any blue.
A hundred yards down the beach, she idly watched a pair of teens gang up on a Hammerhead, one armed with a steel pipe and the other with a modified spring rifle. The pipe connected with the Hammerhead’s vulnerable neck and snapped the tendons, and as it fell its CPU was quickly neutralized with a homemade bullet — most likely a nail wrapped in thick layers of paper and tipped with a thin shell of smelted copper, fired from less than a foot away. There wouldn’t be enough force to do any damage, otherwise.
The one with the pipe waved at Mal when he saw her staring, gesturing at the prone patroller, “Last one!”
She waved back, watching them drag it away to be repurposed or destroyed. She looked down at the candy she had mindlessly taken from her pocket, running her thumb over the cellophane. They were her favourite growing up, and not even the wild strawberries of Kawehno:ke could compare — those were too small, too sour, with too many little seeds and impossible to savour for more than a second. She placed unwrapped the candy and placed it into the pouch of her cheek, as perfectly sweet as she remembered. Just one of these candies could last her the whole day, if she restrained herself.
With strawberry courage under her tongue, she turned on her heel and trudged onward, head down as her feet traced a path due north into Bay Ridge. The pavement grew more rugged as she approached the address scrawled on her arm, the streets smashed to rubble and filled with people keeping the resistance moving from the second line: delivering minor medical care in Arabic, strategizing in Mandarin, organizing offensive and defensive manoeuvres in Polish.
She moved past the guerrillas with her head down, blending in with ease. Her footsteps didn’t falter, not even when the scar tissue on her calf started to tighten up. She had gotten lucky, after all: her right leg had been bloodied by shrapnel from an exploding tear-gas canister, her left wreathed with a burn that forever deadened her nerve endings, but she could still walk. Her shoulders hunched under the weight of Goose’s catatonic body, and she flinched at the sound of Gwenh’s shrill, anaphylactic wheezing; she couldn’t go back for her, not even when she watched her wrench the snorkel from her face in mindless panic, gasping for air through a closing windpipe, collapsing into the fog of tear-gas and not getting back up.
“Watch it!”
She leapt back at the shouted Arabic and watched dully as the bike sped by, hauling a trailer of supplies toward the nearest barricade. She couldn’t tell how much time she’d lost, standing in the street and staring at the alley that Gwenh had died in. The distant sounds of fighting were only a block away, the enemy’s armoured vehicles hauling artillery and personnel just beyond that. She tilted her head back to catalogue all the vantages that could hide the barrel of a rifle — the best defence against Midtown’s aerial support was a shooter with perfect aim — and followed the scant flashes of gunmetal.
She paused at the mouth of a seemingly innocuous alley, knowing the front line to be close by the tension in the air. She knelt down on one knee and pulled out a hand-mirror to peer around the corner. The barricade was still intact, both sides lined with gleaming barrels and an armoured vehicle providing support on the Midtown side, but two individuals had shed their weapons to meet in the middle. She put away the mirror and moved to her belly, shuffling closer to aim her camera at the negotiation: in all her life, she had never heard of peace-talks actually happening on the front lines.
It was easy to recognize the Untouchables’ premier negotiator, even when all front-liners bound their faces with white-and-black scarves: Mahmoud, a mentor of Yuen-Fa’s, who sometimes had pieces of baklava to spare. Eliza was even easier to recognize as Midtown’s negotiator: it would be hard to forget her childhood bully, who from a young age had ensured that no one would approach Mal with a ten-foot-pole.
She thought she would feel some satisfaction, now that everyone would see Evil Eliza for who she was, but it wasn’t that simple anymore. No matter her allegiance, Eliza was still just as disposable as the people she had betrayed — another cog in the war machine, another way to divide and conquer. There was a reason that she was out in the open, rather than any of her new comrades: Midtown would never risk one of its own where ten Untouchables would do.
Mal scooted forward to better frame the photo, hoping to catch the historic moment, regardless of Eliza’s involvement. The crack in the lens encircled the two negotiators, protecting them from their blurred surroundings. She would get no better chance with this light, but she hesitated to snap the picture. Even covered faces were dangerous to record, and many had their eyes and hands exposed — people had been file-struck for less.
Something in the air changed, before she could override her instincts. Postures tensed, hands reached for weapons, and Mahmoud threw himself backward as bullets began to fly. Mal’s hands scraped over the pavement as she scrambled away from the firefight and ran for cover — the metal door she latched onto was sticking in its frame, and when she finally wrestled it open a rusting piece on the bottom caught the sole of her shoe, viciously ripping apart the worn rubber.
The sound of gunfire was no easier to bear as she hid behind a long-defunct deli counter, staying away from the blown-out windows at the front of the building and waiting for it to be over. At least she knew that it would end as it always did: Midtown’s extravagant cover-fire would soon outgrow their ammunition, and as soon as they paused to reload the Untouchables would take back the critical advantage and overwhelm them.It was all doubly true when Midtown was stupid enough to leave an armoured vehicle on the table: the tank-like crafts were slow, half-blind, and wholly unsuitable as a means of quick retreat, and it would be left behind for the Untouchables to seize. If the Midtown soldiers tried to pile inside and retreat, they risked a particularly brave guerrilla stuffing a bomb into its exhaust pipe as it lumbered away.
Once the initial barrage began to thin out, Untouchable rifle-shots started to cut through the noise. She counted the shots as they came from the floor above her and across the street, keeping a tally in her head: three shooters, all with standard weapons and clips, ten shots and counting. The Midtown voices were mounting into a panic, the English calls to retreat sounding more and more muddled while the Polish calls to hold strong cracked like lightning in between, and the battle finally ceased at twenty-one bullets. After a tense moment, the armoured vehicle was fired up in preparation for pulling out the concrete barricades and clearing the way for Untouchable territory to expand, and Polish became Arabic as front-liners called for medics and supplies.
It felt like hours had passed before she could unfurl from her protective huddle. She thought she had a stronger stomach, but if this was how she handled herself among the rote operations of war then she had no business being here. She would retreat, and wait for Yuen-Fa’s dinner on Friday — a week of miserably pacing holes into the floor was better than getting shot at.
And then she heard the shuffle of thick-soled shoes overhead and a distinctly Willow-like curse, and she remembered how little patience she had for wasting time. She closed her eyes and sighed, squeezing her shaking hands together as she turned to the stairs and stomped her way to the second floor. On the landing, she planted herself out of sight and kicked the door open, hoping that she had given Willow enough warning as she waited for the all-clear.
Instead, she heard him take aim, preparing to deal a headshot. “When I bite the hand that feeds, who will you blame?”
She grimaced — this code was unfamiliar, and spoken in a jumble of Polish-Arabic-Mandarin instead of just one. Deciphering it took some work, especially with the uncommon words and the threat of Willow’s unerring aim. “I cannot say, friend,” she finally answered, using the same mash of languages, every word muddled on her atrophied tongue. She hoped he would recognize her voice — she was screwed, otherwise. “But I mean you no harm — I’m looking for Tai-Song.”
A brief pause, and then: “Identify yourself.”
“Mal, who lived in Silver Lake, who tends to the dead.” She held her camera ahead of herself like a white flag. “You know me, Low.”
“Then you know I hate nicknames.” The gun drop onto a flat surface with a dull clatter, and Mal’s head tipped back in relief. “I’m unarmed.”
“I’m coming in.” She raised her hands out of habit as she rounded the corner, but Willow had already turned away, setting up a new nest by the west-facing window, where a drone suppository gleamed in the distance like a blurry bubble. She turned away from him and followed the spent casings to the east-facing window, curiously peering down on the second line. The victory had come at a cost — for every person up and moving there were two lying dead or wounded. Medics were already assessing the damage, identifiable only by action: there was once a global law that medics were to be spared from war, but in practise they were often the first targets. Like the colour blue and handheld cameras, red crosses, crescents, and crystals were no longer safe to flaunt in this city, if they ever had been.
Mal solemnly watched as one of the medics darted from corpse to corpse, rifling through pockets and bags until they found some pressure-release dressings to use on Mahmoud. Two soldiers held him upright as he shuddered, face bare and bloodless — a spike of worry went through her heart, worry that he would end up on the Database, but that seemed to be a distant consideration for everyone else. One of the soldiers cradled Mahmoud’s head against his chest, carding his fingers through his curly hair to distract him from the approaching medic; the other was cutting open the thigh of his pant-leg to expose the gory, four-pointed wound.
Mahmoud was given a belt to bite down on as the gauzy bandage was lashed around his thigh and pulled taut to activate the chemical agents. His groans grew louder as the bandage began to build up pressure; he threw his head back and screamed when the corkscrew bullet was forced from his body. It clattered down onto the pavement, trailing blood and pulverized flesh, the motor inside still turning its razor-sharp blades. One of the bystanders swiped up a spent ammo drum and trapped the bullet inside like an insect.
Mahmoud sagged against the man stroking his hair, sweat dotting his forehead as the packet started to disinfect and clot his wound. With an injury like that, he would be laid up until the ship began to board and well after, and it was possible he’d never walk without a limp again. Mal fervently prayed that she wouldn’t see his body come through the crematorium, as he was lifted onto a stretcher and carried past the eight casualties of the other side.
Her attention shifted, and she watched with fascination as a lone figure crouched nearby while a designated pair carefully bound each of the bodies in shrouds. When the shrouding was complete, the figure stood with an unhurried stretch, reaching into their satchel for a burlap bag and a small flask of oil, pushing off the cap with their thumb and stoppering the spout as they turned the vial upside-down, the motion as easy and practised as breathing. They knelt at the first of the bodies and pulled back the shroud from the young man’s face, dragging their oil-covered thumb across his forehead before opening his mouth to tuck a small parcel inside.
With a start she recognized Pidge, a distant cousin from Baba and Jay’s side of the family, so distant that she could count the amount of times they had spoken on one hand, and she couldn’t be sure whether Pidge was her given name or a nickname. With that recognition it was clear what she was doing: she was preparing the bodies for an Untouchable’s burial, with oil steeped with amaryllis petals to soften the skin and a bulb of dried flower bulbs to mask the scent of blood in the cavities, staving off the symptoms of death to give their loved ones a chance to kiss them goodbye.
Soon enough, she was finished with the last body — unlike a real Untouchable’s funeral, this was a quick and perfunctory affair done out of sheer duty rather than love, a courtesy that was seldom repaid — and switched gears to help to load the shrouded fallen into the flatbed of the recently-acquired armoured vehicle. From here, the bodies would be taken to an unmanned checkpoint somewhere far from the fighting and dead-dropped into the custody of the enemy; another courtesy that would never be repaid, if the positions were switched.
The trailer could only fit four at a time; Pidge shut the tailgate after the last body and thumped the side of the trailer’s metal body, sending the courier off with a sharp order in Arabic. She turned back to the fray and almost tripped over another body, this one bearing a familiar face.
“Oh, Eliza,” Mal heard herself say, as a pair of medics lifted her into a shroud. Pidge traded some words with Eliza's keepers, and after some terse back-and-forth she stepped away: Eliza’s body was going back to Delany, not Midtown. The dead woman's forearm flopped gracelessly from the cloth as they lifted her up, blood trailing along the back of her hand and the length of her index finger in a long, clean line.
“She defected last year. The rumour is that she got caught in Astoria and gave up some intel to save herself.”
“I’m sorry. I know you two were close.” Her shrouded body joined all the others, laid out in a grid on the pavement to be collected.
“We were, until she got six people killed.” He sounded disaffected, even as he changed the subject. “I never would have figured that you’d come back here, with all that happened.”
She turned around to look at him. He was preoccupied with rearranging the bullets in his bandolier, breathing meditatively through a two-foot-long flexible tube held between his back right molars; the end of the tube, tied to the breast of his shirt, was capped with a paper-and-cloth filter. His blond hair was down to his chin now, half-tied-back to bare his stormy eyes and a new trophy that explained why he wasn’t wearing his old mask: the long corkscrew-scar stretched from his nostril almost to his ear, and she couldn’t stop herself from wincing at the way his cheek was sunken-in over the missing bone. With a scar like that, getting a good seal was probably more trouble than it was worth.
She shook her head and cleared her throat. “Yuen-Fa says Tai-Song’s gone missing.”
He shrugged, working hard at appearing unworried even though his irritation was patently obvious. “He’s been disappearing like this since last year, no word on when he’ll be back or where we can find him. He’ll be back soon.”
“Maybe.” She could tell Willow was worried, no matter how angry he was: he wouldn’t dream of being so forthcoming with her otherwise. No one liked rubbing elbows with undertakers, after all. “He say anything noteworthy before running off this time? What he was working on, or where?”
“Dom cornered him coming out of the old base in Borough Park, 13th and 46th. You’ll find his stuff somewhere in there.” He looked through the scope at the far-off domes and bit off a curse. “Of course I’m still not close enough, this day just can’t get any better — he was talking about needing something techy, but that was almost three weeks ago.”
“Was there a shipment for electronics recently?” She hadn’t heard anything, which she now realized was strange — every conversation with Yuen-Fa involved some kind of announcement about what shipments they were expecting.
“We haven’t been keeping track of that stuff lately — if it’s not food or medicine, it won’t get logged.” He glanced at her as he started to pack up his gear, trying to appear nonchalant as he slung his gun over his shoulder. “So. You have a baby?”
“Clover. Want to see a picture?”
He leaned over to look at the print she’d developed just before leaving Kawehno:ke, already lovingly creased into quarters. His eyes crinkled with a smile. “Cute. You’re coming with us?”
She quickly folded up the picture and put it in her pocket. “She’s old enough.”
“No need to snap, we’re glad to have you. It’s lucky they make freezers for babies, huh?”
By all accounts a normal sentence, but it still made her shudder and gracelessly return to the matter at hand. “Do you think Tai-Song might have been running around with someone behind your back?”
He scratched his nose, eyes thoughtful and tired. The sudden suggestion of infidelity didn’t seem to faze him. "I don’t think it’s a kid.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t think he’d make that many mistakes in a row.” He hefted his bag onto his other shoulder and headed for the stairs. “He and Dom don’t want kids — they’ve made that very clear.”
She knew a sore topic when she saw one, and hurried to change the subject. “I’m going to go trash his place, then — and look for leads, I guess. Any parting wisdom?”
He paused in the doorway, one hand lingering on the frame. His fingers arched angrily for a moment before relaxing. “I want my hairbrush back, if you find it.”