Iced

“… try some hot water. Mega, you’re a mess. I got the shower working again. Go take one.”

“It’s just a little blood—”

“It’s a bucket. Maybe two.”

“—and a few bruises.”

“You look like you got hit by a truck. And you smell.”

“I do not,” I say indignantly. “I would know. I have supersmell.”

He looks at me hard. “Mega, I think you have guts in your hair.”

I reach up, dismayed. I thought I got them all out on the way over. I root around in my curls and pull out a long slimy piece.

I stare at it, revolted, thinking how maybe I should cut my hair really short or start wearing a ball cap all the time, then I look at him and he’s looking at me like he’s going to toss his cookies, then all the sudden we both start cracking up.

We laugh so hard we can’t breathe. We’re on the floor, holding our sides.

Guts in my hair. What kind of world am I living in? Even though I was always different, and saw things other people didn’t see, I never thought I’d be sitting on a sofa, in a virtual bomb shelter underground, with security cams and trapdoors and booby traps all around us, hanging with a seventeen-year-old (hot!) genius who makes sure I eat more than protein and candy bars (he says I’m not getting the right vitamins and minerals for proper bone health) and knows how to get a shower running in post-wall Dublin.

He plays a mean game of chess, too.

He pauses the movie when I head for the shower. I grab a change of clothes on the way in.

This is Dancer’s place, not mine. But he keeps things stocked for me in case I come by. Like me, he’s got lots of other digs, too. You have to keep moving in this city to increase your odds of survival, and set things real careful when you leave, so you know if somebody’s invaded your turf while you were gone. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. People kill each other over milk.

The hot water lasts four glorious minutes. I scrub my hair, wrap it in a towel and study my face in the steamed-up mirror. Bruises are me. I know the progression: black turns purple, purple goes green, then you get all jaundiced-looking for a while. I look past the bruises. I lock eyes with my reflection and don’t look away. The day you look away you start to lose yourself. I’m never going to lose myself. You are what you are. Deal with it or change.

I toss the towel, finger-comb my hair, tug on jeans, a tee, and consider a pair of combat boots. Dancer picked them out for me. Said I won’t burn through the soles as fast. I decide to give them a try.

I grab another bowl of puny orange slices on the way back to the sofa, pop open a jar of marshmallow cream and slather it on, then coat it all with hard-shell chocolate.

Dancer and me get down to business. He starts the movie again while I get out the game board. He kicked my butt at Go Bang for hours the last time I dropped in, but I’m feeling lucky tonight. I even magnanimously accept a restricted second move when I win the flip for opening play.

I do something I haven’t done in a long time. I let my guard down. I’m drunk on fruit and marshmallow cream and the thrill of winning at Go Bang. I was up all night last night, and my day was long and eventful.

Besides, Dancer’s got killer booby traps around his place, almost as good as mine.

I push my backpack out of the way and fall asleep on his couch, fist under my cheek, sword in my hand.

I don’t know what wakes me but something does and I lift my head a few inches, slit my eyes and peer around.

Big, scary-looking men surround me.

I blink, trying to clear my vision. It’s hard to do when my eyes are even more swollen than they were when I went to sleep.

Dimly I realize I’m the focal point of a circle of machine guns.

I shoot up to sitting and I’m just about to freeze-frame when a hand slams me back into the couch so hard the wood frame cracks behind my shoulder blades.

I lunge up, and get slammed right back down again.

One of the men laughs. “Kid doesn’t know when to stay down.”

“She’ll learn.”

“Bet your ass she will. If he lets her live.”

“He sure as fuck shouldn’t. Not after what she did.”

“Dani, Dani, Dani.”

I flinch. I’ve never heard anyone say my name so gently. It creeps me all kinds of out.

He’s towering over me, arms crossed over his chest, scarred forearms dark against the rolled-up sleeves of a crisp white shirt. Heavy silver cuffs glint at both wrists. The light is smack behind his head, as usual.

“You didn’t really think I’d let you get away with it,” Ryodan says.

SIX

“I will break these chains that bind me”

“Hurt’s a funny thing,” Ryodan says.

I say nothing. It’s taking all my energy to stand, despite the chains holding me. I’m somewhere in Chester’s, in a room with stone walls. I feel the distant beat of rhythmic bass behind me, in the soles of my feet. If I didn’t have supersenses, I wouldn’t be able to pick it up at all. Because it’s so faint, I know I’m far beneath the public part of the club, probably at the bottom. That means the lower levels didn’t get as badly damaged in the explosion yesterday as I hoped.

They put a bag over my head when they brought me in. Wherever I am, they didn’t want me to be able to find my way back. It’s a logical deduction that they plan to let me live. You don’t bag the head of somebody who’s never going to see anything again. A single low-watt lamp illuminates the room behind him—or fails to. There’s barely enough light to see him standing a dozen feet away.

“Some people fall apart when they get hurt,” he says. “Puddle into apathy and despair and never recover. They wait all their lives for someone to come along and rescue them.” He moves in that strangely fluid way—not freeze-framing but not walking like a Joe either—a ripple of muscle and cascade of wind. Then he’s standing in front of me. “But others … well, they don’t go from hurt to pain. They flash from insult to fury. They raze everything in sight, which usually succeeds in obliterating the very thing that hurt them. However, it causes collateral damage.”

I hang my head so he can’t see the fire in my eyes. “Dude. Bored. If I’d ever been hurt, I’d give a shit. But I haven’t.”

He pushes the hair out of my face with both his hands, sliding his palms over my cheeks. It takes all I’ve got to conceal a shiver. He forces my chin up. I flash him my best hundred-Megawatt smile.