CHAPTER ONE
THE BARE BULB ABOVE the sink spluttered and died, and Vika swore, throwing the shirt she was washing into the basin with a heavy thwack. She glanced up at the small window near the ceiling of the building’s communal washroom and saw a faint orange glow, so at least the sun hadn’t gone down completely yet. But the flow from the faucet slowed to a trickle and then quit altogether, cause no power meant no pump getting water up to the third floor. The juice wasn’t supposed to go down for two more hours, but then supposed to didn’t mean much on this sorry, backwater excuse for a planet.
Course she wasn’t unprepared for it. She’d learned from experience to always keep a little bucket in the sink when washing to hold on to some water just in case something went wrong, and something near always did. The water in her bucket was dingy and frothed with soap, but it would do to rinse the shirt she’d been laundering. The rest of the clothes would just have to wait til later.
“About time, duchess,” Mrs. Carson said as she exited the washroom. Vika could barely make out the sour old cow in the dimness of the hallway—lit as it was with just the one weak battery light—but she recognized the voice well enough that she didn’t need to see Carson’s scowl and sloppily buttoned housecoat to know it was her.
“Juice is out,” Vika said. The woman cursed with great creativity, and Vika smiled. Ruining Carson’s day took some of the sting out of the early outage, at least.
She took the stairs down to the first floor slow and careful. She’d fallen down that poky staircase more than once, and she wasn’t about to do it today, not with an armful of clothes she’d spent so long cleaning. The smell of mildew and stale dakha leaf was thick round her, and she skipped the step she knew sagged.
She nudged the door to her flat open with one hip and found that someone had already lit a couple of candles and her family’s stinking, smoking gas lamp. Her mum looked up from the cooking and frowned at her.
“You’re going to be late,” she said, the faint light emphasizing the deep wrinkles in her forehead.
“I know,” Vika replied.
“You need a shower.”
“I know that, too, Mum, but what would you have me do about it now?”
Her mum muttered something and turned back to the stove. At the other end of the room, Vika’s sister, Lavinia, was sprawled out across the bed they shared, her face lit by the blue glow of the screen she held inches from her nose. Once upon a time they’d each had their own bedrooms, and neither of them had had to sleep on a pullout in the middle of the fecking sitting room, but that had been a long time ago. Lavinia was curled under the quilt, cozy as a snail in its shell, watching something on the ancient feed screen they’d bartered for at the little black market behind the Sullivan Street food depot years ago. Lavinia had never been good about pacing herself with the battery, so it was attached to the extension cord that snaked across the room and out the cracked window. There it joined dozens of other cords, like delicate tentacles rippling out from their beast of a building, running down the back alley and into a government transformer someone in the neighborhood had hacked. It was working, for now. When too many people plugged in, it would become as useless as the dead plugs inside, and eventually the mercs would discover them siphoning juice and shut it down. But in the meantime, a steady stream of frigid air came in the window along with the less steady supply of power, and Vika shivered.
“That rich old toser died,” Lavinia said as she watched the newsfeed. “Chapin. They’re saying he was worth billions. Can you even imagine being that rich?”
Vika could hardly care less about some dead Ploutosian fat cat. “You know, you could help Mum with dinner. Or at least let her plug in a light instead of watching your feeds.”
Lavinia shrugged. “Mum said she doesn’t mind.”
“There aren’t enough amps in that little line to power anything useful anyway,” her mum said, cause why fix a problem now when she could complain about it later.
Vika dropped the basket of washing beside the bed with a bang.
“These better be hung when I get back,” she told Lavinia, shucking her shirt and reaching for one of the clean ones pinned to the line strung across the window. There hadn’t been much resembling sun for days, so the shirt was clammy and cold where it clung to her skin.
Lavinia didn’t look up. “I been working in the office for Da all day.”
Vika grabbed her coat off its hook by the door, patting the pockets to check for her sting spray and crank light. “And I’m gonna be working at Nicky’s all night, so you’ll do your share.”
“You an’t in charge of me.”
“Maybe not, but I’m the one can make your life a living misery if you cross me,” Vika said, while across the room their mum said, “Don’t say an’t.”
Lavinia rolled her eyes at one or both of them, but Vika didn’t have time to get into it with her, so she just kicked the washing basket closer to her sister and left.
Outside it was near dark, the fading light from the setting sun barely penetrating the thick haze—made of natural atmosphere but worsened by coltane pollution—that clung to the entire planet like a skin. There were orange emergency lights all up and down the street that were supposed to stay on even when the juice went out, but, as usual, supposed to didn’t mean much on Philomenus. All but one had gone dark, either cause someone had ganked the battery or cause the bulb was dead. Luckily there was just enough daylight left for Vika to pick her way over the trash, ice patches, and tangle of extension cords that choked the street as she made her way to work.
Nicky’s glowed bright from four blocks away, a beacon through the grayness. It was one of the few places in the THs with its own generator and enough bits coming in the door to keep it fueled. No one dared try to gank juice from Nicky’s lest they incur the wrath of the whole neighborhood, not to mention the man himself.
The barracks north of town had been bombed by PLF guerrillas again a few days ago, so there were even more mercs on the street than usual, looking like giant ants in their black uniforms and helmets as they patrolled the pavement. Two of them stopped Vika outside of the bar to search her bag, but she didn’t have anything worth stealing, so they let her go on in.
The place was crammed with bodies, stinking of sweat and spilled liquor, the air so humid after being recycled through a hundred pairs of lungs that Vika felt like she was swimming through it. She had to push and elbow her way to the bar, where Stella was pouring with one hand and collecting bits with another. Stella frowned when she spotted her.
“Move!” she barked, and the masses parted to let Vika through. When someone behind the bar spoke, everyone listened, else they didn’t drink.
“You’re late, Vika,” Stella said, although when she said Vika’s name, it sounded more like “idiot.”
“Juice went out early,” Vika replied.
Stella snorted and glanced up at the teeming bar. Dark nights were always their busiest. “Don’t I know it.”
Vika went to work, pouring glasses of grock and uzso, doing battle with the ancient bit machine, cleaning up after sloppy drunkards. There was just one good thing about a busy night at Nicky’s, and it was that it left her with less time to think about how much she hated this fecking job. She knew she was lucky to have it, but she hated every dirty, coarse, lewd patron and every indignity that came with catering to them, like they were somehow better than her just cause she was behind the bar and they were in front of it. She hated being leered at and felt up and spoken down to. Really, the only thing she hated more than working at Nicky’s was the memory of not being able to buy enough food to keep her belly quiet, and still some days she’d rather go to sleep hungry.
Tonight was shaping up to be one of those.
“You molly-loving bastard!” a barrel-chested man yelled, slamming his mug to the tabletop as he clambered unsteadily to his feet. “I’ll kill you!”
“Shut your fool mouth and sit down, Janus,” his friend replied. “You’re drunk.”
Beside the two arguing men sat one of their regulars, Knox Vega, at his usual spot at the bar, practically folded over his near-empty glass of grock. A blond girl Vika vaguely recognized was trying to wrestle him off the barstool, and he was clinging on so tight his fingers had gone white.
“Come on!” she said. “We’re going home.”
“An’t going nowhere,” Knox slurred.
“Yes you fecking well are!” the girl said, heaving him off the stool. Knox’s grip failed and he went tumbling against her, which sent her crashing into the back of the barrel-chested man.
“Watch yourself!” he bellowed.
“Leave her alone, Janus,” his friend said. “It was an accident.”
Janus leapt at his friend, hands outstretched to wrap round his neck, and a cry went up throughout the bar as the fight broke out.
Stella turned to Vika. “It’s your turn.”
Vika sighed, grabbed the sting spray from her coat, and fought her way through the crowd. Lord she wished she was rich, some fancy Ploutosian lady with the world at her feet, spending her nights drinking champagne with sophisticated people, instead of a barmaid on a crumbling planet breaking up drunken brawls and struggling to keep her head above water.
Knox and the girl had left in a hurry, but the two fighting men were now rolling round on the floor, sweat and punches flying. As she reached them, one knocked into a table filled with glasses and sent it crashing down beside them. They rolled in the glass and booze, and blood joined the mixture. Bystanders whooped and hollered. The mercs outside peered in through the windows but only chuckled at the sight.
“Hey!” Vika yelled, kicking at one of the men’s meaty ribs. She knew from experience that she was too young and small to just snarl orders the way Stella did and expect people to listen. “Take it outside!” What a mess this was going to be to clean up. She looked for Jay, the bar’s hired muscle, but couldn’t see him. He was probably out back grabbing a sneaky smoke. She clicked the safety latch off her sting spray. “Stop!”
When they ignored her, she fogged them with a cloud of the stuff. The crowd backed away, and the fighters broke apart, groaning and grabbing their eyes and noses.
“Now clear out,” she said. “Free round to whoever drops them on the pavement.”
The two men were carried off and Vika surveyed the damage. Blood and grock and glass everywhere. She dropped to her knees, pushed a dark curl from her eyes, and began mopping up the mess with a towel, hating every second of her miserable life.
Then, over the noise of the band in the corner and the general din of the bar, she thought she heard someone calling her name. She stood and peered at Stella through the sea of heads, but the woman wasn’t paying her any mind.
“Vika!” someone said again, the word barely audible over the commotion. Vika hopped, trying to get a clear view over the men who towered round her, and then climbed onto a chair. She spotted a familiar dark-haired figure fighting through the crowd toward the bar.
“Lavinia?” she called.
Lavinia saw her and changed course, like a fish swimming upstream, shoving her way toward her. “Mum and Da says you got to come home right now!” she said.
Vika had never seen her sister so impatient about anything but her supper, but she replied, “Can’t. We’re short staffed.”
“Never mind about that. There’s some fecking toser in the flat”—Lavinia spat the word as though it tasted bad—“and Da says you got to come now. Hurry up!”
Vika’s heart lurched painfully in her chest. She could only think of one reason any toser would want to see her.
She ducked behind the bar, grabbing her coat and fumbling to button it with suddenly numb fingers. Nicky wouldn’t fire her for leaving just this once. Her da had given him a good position at the mine when he was down on his luck, which was how Vika had landed the coveted job behind the bar in the first place. People on this planet had nothing, so they made sure to pay back the few things that were handed to them. Nicky would remember that.
Stella stared at her in disbelief as she gathered her things. “What in the hell do you think—”
“I gotta go,” she said. “Emergency at home.”
“You an’t leaving me right now, Vika, or I swear—”
“Sorry!”
Stella yelled after her, but Vika couldn’t stop. The last time she’d seen a toser here on this planet, it had been the stuffy old man from across the stream who used to come and tutor her and Lavinia. She hadn’t liked it—Mr. Bohr always leaned in too close and smelled of medicine and mothballs—but her mum and da had made the girls take his lessons cause it was good for them and, mostly, cause it was free. Having a real Ploutosian tutor teach them was ten times better than sending them to the overcrowded holding pen masquerading as a neighborhood school. With someone actually teaching her, Vika had discovered she had a natural ability with maths and numbers, while Lavinia excelled at languages. Not that it really mattered since neither of them was destined for any kind of higher education. But thanks to the tutor, both girls were able to pass their final exams and go straight to working several cycles earlier than their peers. That had made all the difference for the family; there had been many hungry nights before Vika’s paycheck from Nicky’s began rolling in.
They’d never known the name of the man who paid the small fortune it must have cost for the tutor to come every week. Mr. Bohr was just another part of the big mystery of Vika’s life. Ever since that particular day when an old man had bought her a freeze cream as a girl, things like this had been happening to her, odd gifts and demands she didn’t understand emanating from the nameless benefactor she didn’t know. The strangeness had dropped off in the last few years, and she had begun to think it was gone forever, just an odd facet of her young life she’d never understand. But a toser coming to see her now with no warning could only mean one thing.
The mystery of Vika’s life was rearing its head once again.
CHAPTER TWO
VIKA AND LAVINIA STEPPED out of Nicky’s, where it was bright and warm, and into the dark, cold street. The Philomeni Liberation Front had brought out one of their carts and parked it on the corner, distributing cups of coffee and extra gloves and scarves to the rough sleepers who had gathered round to snatch a bit of warmth before they found a place to bed down for the night. The wind was bitter and Vika couldn’t see a hand in front of her face, so she grabbed the crank light from her pocket and turned the gear that powered the little bulb inside. The beam it generated was weak, but it was enough to get them home.
Town Housing 76 looked identical to every building round it, just another concrete box thrown up to house the people who came here to work in the coltane mines. The buildings weren’t supposed to be permanent, just a way station to hold families while proper housing was built, which was why they were so cramped and falling down now. They were once called Temporary Housing, but the folks in charge had just hoped everyone would forget that part when the coltane market cratered and they scrapped the plans for those proper houses they’d promised. Course, no one had.
Vika followed Lavinia to their flat in the back corner of the first floor. A ground-level flat was one of the perks of their da’s job managing the building. The atmo-haze got thicker the higher up you went; by the sixth floor, you could barely see out the windows cause the fog was so thick. Not that there was anything much to see.
“She’s here,” Lavinia said as she opened their front door.
“Yeah, what’s—” Vika stopped short. It wasn’t a mothballed old man waiting in their tiny sitting room. The toser in question was young, not many cycles older than she was, with blue eyes so bright they were near shocking against his dark hair and sandy skin. Even if Lavinia hadn’t told her, she’d have known the second she set her sights on him that he wasn’t from Philomenus. His perfectly pressed suit and tailored shirt—pale blue, and she wondered if he chose that color cause he knew what it did to his eyes—instantly marked him as someone from the planet across the stream.
“Good evening,” he said, rising from his chair beside her da and giving her a little bow from the waist, the way she’d seen men do on the Ploutosian drama feeds Lavinia liked to watch. “You must be Viktoria.”
“That’s her,” Lavinia said, throwing herself down onto the sofa. Thank the heavens she’d folded their bed away after Vika had left for work. Just the idea of this elegant young man seeing the grubby, thin mattress she shared with her sister—which took up near half of the room—turned her stomach sour. “The queen in the flesh.”
Copyright © 2022 by Cristin Terrill
