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Even as we begin to sing, I glance around, wondering if anyone believes this can work. I do not know if I do. But I sing anyway. What else can be done?
As we move into the chorus, I feel a burning in my body. The pain stabs through me. It is the worst pain I have ever felt.
The healing song keeps us alive, but that is all. It does not promise that life will be painless, and I very nearly scream at everyone to stop. To let us just die already because death cannot be worse than whatever this is.
Renari screams beside me, and at first, I think that he has the same thought. When I turn to face him, I realize it is much worse than that.
“It hurts,” he cries, squeezing my shoulder. His face is webbed with inky black veins that splinter through his golden face. His expression shifts and changes into a grotesque and hideous black mask before my eyes, and I wonder if I am delusional from the pain.
Then I see that his wings have rotted away from his body, twitching on the floor as the tissue dies. Tumors pop out across my body, quickly turning to bone as the song of healing dictates them to change to healthy tissue.
The song begins to fade as those around me stop singing. I cannot tell if they are dead or asleep. Soon, the radiation alarm is louder than the voices that remain, and the song is abandoned.
My eyes drift shut. I cannot fight the pain any longer, and this is the only respite my body can find. I know that if I let myself sleep, I will die like the others.
But as my eyes flutter and close again, I decide I do not care.
When we awake a year later, we are no longer the Ishani. We are the monsters created by their war, with hideous black faces that can never let anyone who sees us forget the nightmare they have trapped us in.
We are the Reapers, and now we take what we want. They’ve taken enough from us.
“Renari, you take the others to the refrigeration center. Take whatever food you can carry and get it on the ship. The casino feeds thousands, so we can last for a long time on what’s here. I’ll meet up with you when I’m done at the vault.”
Renari nods. He’s an excellent second-in-command, I can’t lie. I trust all my men, but none more than Renari.
“And remember, we’re not here to make a scene,” I say. “In and out. Keep it quick.”
If we have to, we’ll kill whoever gets in our way. But we didn’t tunnel through the casino, plan our heist to the second, and lurk in the shadows all this way just to start a riot now. We’re Reapers, not murderers. Sometimes, the line gets a bit muddled, but I’m not about to go out of my way to leave a bunch of bodies when we just came here for resources.
So far, no one even knows we’re here. Ignorant alien races litter the casino floor, gambling and drinking as though it’s business as usual. For them, it is.
Let them have their fun. We Reapers will be having the last laugh tonight.
CHAPTER 2
ALANA
“It’s slow tonight, huh?” Maisie remarks, folding her arms.
“Tell me about it.” I sigh. “Our tips tonight are going to be shit.”
“Well, at least we don’t have to keep going to the vault every hour to download our credits. Some nights, I swear I just go up and down to the vault all night long.”
We’re supposed to never carry more than about a thousand credits on us at any given time. If we get robbed on the floor, the owners don’t want us turning over a credstick worth a fortune, so making sure we make regular deposits is the best way to avoid that.
I heard once, a long time ago, a girl got her credstick stolen at the end of a thirteen-hour shift. The casino was out something like a hundred thousand credits.
I thought maybe the obvious answer was that no one should be working thirteen hours without taking at least one clock-out break, but I guess the real lesson was just that they should just make us walk the nearly quarter-mile trek to the vault more often. Sure.
“Oh, he looks like a big tipper,” Maisie remarks, tipping her head discreetly toward a well-dressed Vakutan. “I call dibs.”
She starts heading his way with a predatory smile, then stops abruptly. “Dammit!” Her shoulders sag, and I turn to realize two other drink girls are already hanging off him, one on each arm.
“You’ll get the next one.” I pat her arm in a halfhearted attempt to cheer her up.
She glowers. “There is no way I’m standing around in all this smog and still missing rent. This night had better be worth it.” She waves an arm to indicate all the cigars and the smoke that hangs in a thick haze over everything.
Maisie gets her wish about an hour later when a tall Kaleidian takes a liking to her. I’m pretty sure he orders a drink every time she twirls her blond hair, even though he gives half of them away to his friends. I’m not sure if he’s trying to impress them or her until I see him tip her on her personal comm pad for the third time.
