Page 231

“No, Mother. I’ll kill her right—”

“Picker. You owe me one breathin’ fighter, not a dead breeder.” She twirls her hammer. “Doncha?” He eyes the hammer and nods. “I got this stomach thing, right? This ulcer that just burns all through the night. Hard enough to keep sleep with it gnawing into me. Now I gotta try and sleep fearful my men can’t even sniff out a Gamma.” Her eyes flick to me. So this is it, then. My tongue finds the molar. “I can smell a pet rat through water. The stink…” She breathes deep. “So many old memories. But watch her lie through those rat teeth, boys. Watch her try to slink in with us.” She taps the table with her hammer. “What clan are you, lass?”

I look her in those eyes, with plans to melt them out of her skull.

“My name is Lyria. I am the last Gamma of Lagalos.”

“Lagalos,” Harmony replies, searching for the memory. “Camp 121. It was an easy cleanse. Almost got a Telemanus for the effort.”

“You killed my family. Their names were—”

Before I can finish, she slams the hammer down on my left index finger. I see flashes of white from the sudden pain, and hear a scream. But it ain’t mine.

Harmony looks over my shoulder. I twist my head around. One of her men wobbles in through the open door, half-melted neck and torso leaking blood. He pitches forward onto the other man at the door. The man catches him and then starts to scream, holding up his hand as the acid begins to eat it too.

“How many of you are there?” Harmony shouts at me. She slaps me so hard I lose track of my efforts to open the molar. By the time I collect myself, she’s up and out of her chair. I missed my chance. Harmony unbuckles her pistol as she hears more screaming from the township. She tosses her hammer to Picker. “Find out how many others there are. Rest of you, with me.”

Picker stares at the door as it slams behind them, muffling the distant screams. Then he turns with a hateful look twisting his face. “Ya dumb slant. Throwing me under to the boss…” He gets real close to my ear and runs the hammer over my lips. “That’s a bad lass.”

He sits on the edge of the table. “Now, I’m not sayin’ I was fond of Duncan. Fact is, this job’s got me a little pinned, and he was making some moves, you know. But…” He taps the table with the hammer. “Man’s got his orders.” He leers in my face. The broken veins of his nose look like Hyperion traffic arteries this close. “You weren’t exactly a looker before, but if you don’t tell me how many girls you got pissin’ acid, well, not even the dead’d kiss you.”

I don’t want to waste my tooth on him.

And I don’t have to.

Behind Picker, a Red girl opens the door and slips through. It is Freckles. One hand rubs at a dark stain on the right side of her dress. She did it then. The other hand is hidden in its right pocket. Her hair is tangled, and her face maintains its dazed expression when she sees what’s happening. She draws her right hand out from her pocket to reveal a tarnished pistol.

“Shoot him,” I say.

The color drains from Picker’s face as he turns to see the young woman he collected not a day ago now holding a gun on him from five paces. His hand reaches out. “Careful with that big iron, lass. You could hurt someone.” He takes a step forward. “Just set it down, right?”

The pistol shakes in her hand.

“Shoot him!” I shout.

Picker takes another step forward, hesitating when he sees her finger stiffen on the trigger. “Think of all the times Gamma did your blood wrong,” he says. “All the times your sibs were sick. How fat they got getting those boxes. While you sat with a bowl of sludge. That’s a Gamma right there.” Freckles blinks as he gestures to me. “?’Course she wants to get your hands dirty for her. But you ain’t bad blood. Just set—”

The gun flashes. It’s a small caliber, so his head only seems to lose its regular dimensions when the bullet goes into it. Picker doesn’t fall. He seizes, gasping like a driller with rust lung. She shoots him again, this time in the chest. He flops down and lies twitching with his eyes open.

“Is he dead?” she asks.

“Well, he ain’t talkin’,” I say. She shudders in horror. “Freckles. Hey, lass. I never asked. What’s your name?”

“Vanna.”

“Vanna, I’m Lyria. Do me a kindness and untie me?”

“You’re really a Gamma?” Vanna says, and the barrel of the gun drifts toward me. I go dead still.

“Yeah. That a problem?”

“You’re not fat enough to be a Gamma.”

I laugh. Of all things.

The gun goes off, slamming a round into the rope on the table and ricocheting past my ear. I jerk my head away, flooding with adrenaline.

“Sorry!” Freckles cries. “I thought that would work!” She tried to shoot the rope in half.