Page 7 of The Fall

“You should come too.” Siku called after her. “The gift is for you. Or Pinga.” Siku looked at the box. “I guess it doesn’t matter which.”

Lusa snapped to attention. Competition with Pinga may be beneath her, but she really wanted to see what was in that box. She stooped her shoulders to hide her excitement. It was probably something stupid anyway.

“From the Chargers.” He held up the box, but didn’t lift the lid. “You should open it in the transport bay.”

Lusa didn’t understand why, but Talia seemed to. She took the box and walked back into the bay. Inside she found a small device. Sleek black and red plastoceramic with a corneal projector. Talia held it up to her eye and then popped off the back panel, revealing a tiny processor. Her Opti scanned it and then she severed a small wire. “It’s clean and the voltage is so low, it wouldn’t be able to reach the geosats, but my Opti couldn’t identify that wire.” She held it out to Lusa. “It should still work.”

Lusa took it gingerly. “What is it?”

“A more advanced version of Sesi’s visor.” Talia said with her lopsided smile. Sesi rolled her eyes.

“I know, you think it looks ridiculous.”

“That’s because it does.”

Lusa fitted it to her eye. Flashing across her vision, a stream of characters caused her to jerk back in surprise. Quickly regaining her composure, Lusa wandered around the hangar scanning various objects, half listening to the adults’ conversation.

“A gesture of good will.” Siku leaned against a tool bench, his bad leg starting to bother him.

“You said the Chargers?” Talia seemed sceptical. “From the tunnels?”

“They’re organised now. And they want to trade.”

“Hence the gift.” Sesi would always put the pieces together with only half of the information. “They knew we would think they didn’t have anything worth trading otherwise. And that we would find retro tech useful.” She narrowed her eyes. “What else do they know?”

“They know that we don’t use cyberware.” Siku pointed to Lusa. Lusa stopped wandering around and joined the adults. “Not that some of us can’t. They think your ability to avoid detection is some sort of nullification implant, that it isn’t compatible with cyberware.” Siku shifted his weight forward. “They think we’re still in the city, controlling things behind the scenes. They have no idea about nanites or viruses. But they have enough parts and know-how to have made that bauble.”

“They made that?” Talia stuffed her hands in her pockets. It caused her to slouch a little with an air of nonchalance. Lusa always thought it made her look cool, though she would never tell her.

“We can make everything we need here.” Lusa spoke up, more to feel included than anything else.

“That’s true.” Sesi placed a palm on Lusa’s shoulder, the way she did every time she was about to deliver a lesson. “But think strategically. Printers go down. Repairs take time. Even if you don’t need anything now, you will in the future. If you already have a relationship…” Sesi held out her hand, presenting the answer.

Lusa had to accept that it made sense, but she was bad at relationships. She was larger. Stronger. Her feelings would erupt in wild and unpredictable ways. A certain wariness from the other girls had developed. She kept her emotions, too large and too intense, walled off and locked away. Her darkness, Talia had called it, once.

Pinga seemed to take everything in stride and everyone gravitated toward her. It hurt, but at least she’d been able to channel it into other pursuits away from the public eye. Talia slipped an arm around Lusa, pulling her in for a side-hug. Lusa needed a reminder that Pinga wasn’t always the favourite. “Why don’t you take the girls?”

Sesi’s eyebrows rose and then tented into a pensive frown. “Callie won’t like that.”

“Of course she won’t.” Talia leaned to see out the door. Callie lay sprawled out on the grass with Minuschok’s head on her chest. “She’ll probably kill you if one of them gets hurt. Or she’ll make that cat do it.”

“Do cats obey commands?” Sesi asked. “The only ones I ever met were strays in the city. And they never listened to anything I said.”

Talia shrugged. Lusa saw it as a tacit agreement that they could go, but they probably wouldn’t be letting Callie know until it was too late. She tried not to bounce giddily back to her MobilePod while the adults discussed the details.

She hated the way the damp clung to her boots underground. Above, exposed to the ever-grey sky, it would freeze or trickle somewhere lower. Here, it ran down the walls, saturating the ground. Lately, whole sections had washed out where the permafrost had become less permanent.

Piston had co-opted an old office, left over from when the tunnels were still under construction. Not large, by any means, but central enough that everyone who needed to be there could get there and small enough to be semi-private. Kerr pulled the heavy metal door shut.

“He put it in a Faraday cage immediately.” Cinder slouched against the wall in an effort to appear relaxed, but the way he crossed his arms over his chest betrayed him. “As soon as it’s out though, there’s a passive tracker that has phantom power. Not great, but if they’re close enough to a tower, we’ll get a general idea of where they’re holed up.”

“I still don’t like it.” Piston stared warily. “It’s a bollocks way to start a partnership.”

Cinder had been told a hundred times before and countered before he’d even finished. “They’re expecting it. The gift was only to show them what we’re capable of. They won’t respect us if we don’t try.” Cinder added with a hopeful note, “Unless you want to hear what the Styx are proposing.”

“Fuck the Styx, yeah?” Kerr stood as tall as she could manage with her chest puffed out. Cinder curled his lip.

“I agree.” Piston made the point final. “I let you set up the meeting and I let you install the tracker because I want to avoid relying on the Styx. Do the Adlets have what we need?”