Adelaide held onto the dream. She held it tight because she was cold, colder than she had ever been, and she did not want to wake and find out what the cold had done.
Something crawled along her cheek, towards her nose. She thought it was a butterfly. But it was an insect, an invader from the real world. A white fly. She hunched her shoulder to knock it aside.
Now sounds raked at the dream, threatening to pull her into consciousness. She clung tighter to the spirit world. A door, opening onto the butterfly farm with an ungentle scrape, and there were people framed within it, and voices. The man who wanted to kill her was there. The girl with the black tooth was there.
She saw Vikram last. He had been walking the vaults of her dreams with the others; it made sense that he was here, allied with the cold. He had a green tinge. The cell had stuck to his skin, as it had stuck to hers when she left him last.
One of them spoke. She ran further into the butterfly farm. She saw the Red Pierrot balanced on a leaf, saw its wings opening and closing. It fluttered into the air and she followed it. Even when the man with the shaven head took her chin and she shivered and he lifted her face to stare into her dream-drugged eyes with his own, she saw only the red and black and white spots, the symmetry.
Vikram was in front of her. She kept very still. If she did not move he would not see her, and he mustn’t see her, not yet. She hid behind the flowers. Vikram spoke her name. His lips moved. There was a look in his eyes, an unfamiliar, broken look that she knew she must remember, but even as she frowned he dissolved into the foliage.
She found herself fully conscious, and she knew that the dream world had gone for good; she had woken up.
“Vik?” she whispered.
Her eyes were wide open but saw nothing. She was cold, so cold. Colder than she’d ever been.
“Vik!”
There was no light, because she had missed him. The room was empty. Vikram had gone.
42 VIKRAM
Pekko stood behind him, his disdain like a burn between Vikram’s shoulder blades.
“Talk to her.”
Adelaide seemed half-dead. Vikram crouched in front of her, looked right into her eyes as he said her name. There was no response but the drowsy flicker of her eyelashes, as though she was drugged.
As they closed the door on the tiny room, Adelaide’s presence stayed with him, as if she had become a part of his own pulse. He could not set aside the image of her face under Pekko’s torchlight. Somehow, he had to protect her.
One of them was always on watch. They patrolled the circumference of the tower, walking through the empty laboratories, past the torched counters, around metal twisted into weird sculptures and the traces of clumsily adapted sleeping spaces. Ilona and Rikard went to check that their blockades were still in place in the other stairwells. Peering out of the dirt filmed window-walls, they watched for any sign of skadi vehicles. The only boats they saw were fish barges heading out to sea.
Pekko contacted the other cells. He reported that they were holding out. The second cell had arranged a call to the Citizens which they would link to Pekko later in the day. The others played cards. They made up a game with a motley collection of chess, Shells and Sharkbait rules. Buried in the dirt, Vikram found a necklace carved out of bone. The string had rotted. When he lifted it the beads scuttled away. He collected them up and they used the pieces for counters.
Nils called Rikard on a point.
“That was five.”
“It was a six.”
“It was a five, I saw it tip.”
“It was a fucking six.”
“Guys, come on!” Drake grabbed the die. “Just throw it again.”
Around lunch time, Rikard handed out kelp squares. Vikram knew that he should be hungry but his stomach felt like air. He had to force himself to eat. Afterwards, he swallowed a few of the pills surreptitiously.
Vikram’s memories of the last riots were all vivid, fast-paced scenes-images of action, of violence, of cold clear mornings and wet nightfalls peppered with the clash of Home Guard guns. Perhaps there had been waiting too. Perhaps he had forgotten. He itched for information, for any news. He would have slid easily into the group’s routines.
He spoke to Pekko.
“Why don’t you let me take a patrol? Split the shifts between us?”
Pekko looked at him and said, “I don’t think so.”
“I want to help.”
“It’s not negotiable.”
As they threw down hand after hand of Pirahna and Sharkbait, he went through every possible and impossible solution in his head. Vikram would not-he could not betray his friends. The act was unthinkable. That did not mean he wasn’t searching for a way to get Adelaide out. Could one of fishing boats help him-could he get out a message? What if he let Adelaide escape, told her to hide in the tower until it was all over? Could he make it look like she’d got out by herself?
By mid-afternoon, he was exhausted. He curled up for a rest. He was only going to doze for thirty minutes but slept for several hours. The lost time worried him. His body never used to crash out with such dangerous oblivion.
When he woke, Pekko was out of the room. Vikram stretched his stiff, groggy limbs, easing cracks out of his knee and elbow joints. He winced as he kneaded the circulation into his muscles. He smelled tobacco. Nils lay on his side, dragging on a cigarette, hacking after every inhalation. Vikram had an instant craving for one of Adelaide’s cigarillos, their warm, woody, complex taste, even their acrid afterbite. Next to Nils, Ilona was filing down her nails with a bit of metal. On the other side of the heater, Rikard and Drake sat talking quietly.
“My brother’s over with Maak’s people,” Rikard was saying.
“Is he your real brother?”
“No. Good as, though.”
“Course. What does he think?”
“Same as us. That it’s changed. Used to be about equality, but everyone knows that isn’t coming. Says there’s been a lot of talk in the last year. About changing policy.”
“In Surface?”
“Everywhere.”
“I suppose your brother sees a lot of Maak, working with them.”
Rikard had clearly seen that Vikram was awake, but he answered Drake nonetheless. “I don’t think anyone sees too much of the man.”
“Who is Maak?” Vikram asked. His voice came out hoarse and crackly, and he cleared his throat.
“Who is he, or who was he?” said Rikard.
“Both.”
Rikard stretched out his legs. “He used to be a petty dealer. Greenhouse drugs, bit of manta on the side. Rose up to second in the Juraj gang. According to legend, he killed Juraj, then hacked him up and used the body parts for fish bait.”
“But Juraj burned. On a pyre. We saw it.”
“Not his limbs. Maak kept the limbs. But the fire fight-that was him, yeah. Crazed. A lot of Juraj’s supporters died that night, shot to bits by the skadi. Conveniently for Maak.”
“It’s true,” said Ilona. “When we heard about it, us girls on the boats, we were pleased at first. Juraj did terrible things to the girls.”
