Probably should have anyway. Could’ve at least given her a funny story to tell when I was gone.
Instead, I just cleared my throat and nodded. “Thank you.”
•—•—•
When the machine was plugged into Randy’s outlet, and I’d been plugged into the machine, Mistral flipped a few switches to bring the device to life. A padded cuff wrapped itself around my upper arm and slowly squeezed. Moments later, the machine extended a long, silvered needle. Before I could even make a size joke, that needle flashed forward and buried itself in the vein of my arm. I watched blood trickle down into the tube at the needle’s end.
“Name of the prisoner you’re visiting, please.” Mistral was all business again, checking the screen built into the machine.
“David Jameson.”
She nodded at something I couldn’t see. “Affirmative. I’ve verified that he remains an inmate at the Hole.”
“I thought all sentences at the Hole were for life?”
“Yeah.” She cocked her head and I could feel her studying me. “Life tends to be a bit shorter down there though, even with military-grade dampeners. Relation to the prisoner?”
“I’m his son.”
“And he’s also a Crow, I see, albeit only a Two.” She shook her head. “Maybe the eggheads are right about genetics playing a role in the powers we get.” The machine beeped three times, and she paused to read something new that had appeared on the screen. “Verified. Welcome aboard, Mr. Banach.”
As the soldiers bundled away the machine, I stuck out my hand. “Damian.”
“What’s your Cape name, Damian?” She shook my hand, her grip firm.
“Still working on it,” I admitted. Somehow, Baron Boner didn’t seem appropriate.
“Take your time. Once it gets out, you’ll never be able to change it.” I couldn’t see her grin, but again, I could almost hear it. “Looks like we have space in car C if you’ll go take a seat.” She gave both Randy and I a nod, and then the winds swirled around her, lifting her back into the air.
Mistral. Second nicest Cape I ever met. Smoking hot too.
She’d die a few years later, when some asshole raised King Rex as a Walker and went on a rampage through New Mexico.
Wasn’t me.
I promise.
CHAPTER 69
Car C was the fourth of the five segments that made up the shuttle, and one of only three that was accessible to passengers. As Mistral had said, there was ample seating available, and I made my way down the aisle until I found an empty row. Some of the other passengers had personal Glass devices with them—even older models than the one I’d left behind—and a few had actual books, but the rest of us just sat in silence as the shuttle shuddered back to life and started moving.
As we crept toward the Hole, conversations started to crop up around me. The old man with bushy eyebrows and a belly-length beard was here to see his son for the first time in nineteen years. The tired-eyed woman two seats ahead of me was bringing pictures of her one-year-old twins to the father who had been imprisoned before their birth. Brothers, sisters, children and parents… everyone had a story. Some were looking for answers. Some were looking for closure. Some just missed the inmate in question, illegal deeds notwithstanding.
By the sound of it, I was the only one there with murder on his mind.
The miles fell away behind us. I spent those hours in silence, watching my mind’s replay of Mom’s death. Wasn’t the same as feeling it, but the images were enough to keep my anger at a boil. I thought of everything that might have been if Mom had lived, thought of what my life might have been like. Most of all, I thought of that look on my dad’s face as he drove his knife into Mom’s body again and again and again.
You don’t understand, Elora. This is for you as much as it is for me.
Fair enough, because this was going to be for Mom and me.
•—•—•
Finally, we reached the Hole, the end of a journey that had been, for me, almost two months in the making. I could hear soldiers disembarking from the rear car, coming up past the passenger sections to listen to orders being relayed from the front. Finally, our own exterior door disengaged with a metallic whine, and we stepped out into the blinding sun of the Mojave.
The Hole wasn’t much to look at from topside; just a huge reinforced bunker with a single door leading in. According to my research, that bunker held nothing but armed guards and an elevator. The prisoner meetings would be somewhere in the cavernous installation underground, past the barracks for the guards who lived on premises, but far above the actual cell blocks.
A line of people stretched from the bunker into the desert, and we joined the end of that line. Noon in the Mojave wasn’t anyone’s idea of a great place to hang out—even in February—but an Earthshaker had fashioned temporary structures of iron and steel to provide shade to those who waited.
I turned to a nearby soldier who couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than me. “Are we the first city to arrive?”
“Third, sir.” He nodded to the other side of our shuttle, where two others were parked. “By far the largest though. I think the administration expected a better turnout.”
“Guess so.” I was still debating whether that was a good or bad thing—fewer people meant I’d get in more quickly, but also meant scrutiny might be higher—when the unnamed soldier excused himself and hurried forward to join an older man in fatigues. At the same time, one of the Capes who had escorted our shuttle—the Baron, judging by his costume—took to the air and headed south at full speed. Around us, other Capes did
