“What is it?” It was shaped vaguely like a gun, with a grip and a barrel, but it was thin, smaller than my palm and too light to be metal. Even stranger, it was warm to the touch.
“What you asked for. Small. Single shot. Guaranteed kill. Just don’t feed it after midnight.”
“Feed it?” For just a second, I felt the weapon twitch in my hand. “This is alive?”
“It was a joke, kid. Sort of.” She shrugged. “Fuck if I know. I figured you wouldn’t want something that security could spot, and there’s not a scanner in this country that will pick that up. Something to do with it being part organic, I guess. Don’t worry though; it’s not sentient. Not this far out of his range anyway.”
“Whose range?”
The motorcycle helmet cocked to one side, as if Her Majesty was studying me, but the yellow smiley face decal made her face impossible to make out. “Legion, obviously.”
“How did you get Legion tech?”
“The same way I get most shit. I stole it when I was in Old Baltimore. Was a pain in the ass, especially while I was still in the fifty-mile radius of his power, but now I guess I’m glad I took it.”
“I didn’t know you’d been to Old Baltimore.” I’d never met someone who’d gone further east than the Badlands. Hell, I’d never even heard of someone doing it.
“I’ve been almost everywhere on this continent. Wherever the job takes me. That city’s a cake walk compared to some towns. You think Legion’s a horror, you should meet his brother.”
I’d also never heard that the lord of Old Baltimore had a brother. “What about West Virginia? Have you been there?”
For a moment, she went quiet. “No jobs in West Virginia, little Crow. No people. Nothing at all except for the one house and the woman sitting on its front porch.”
“You’ve seen Grannypocalyse? With your own eyes?”
“Such as they are… and from a distance.” The helmet swiveled back and forth for a moment. “Eighty years old if she’s a day, drinking from a cup that never runs out of tea, in front of a house that was old and decrepit when the Break hit. And nothing around her and that house for miles and miles but radiated wasteland. Like I said, there’s worse places than Baltimore.”
“Damn.” I looked down at the weapon in my hand just in time to see it twitch a second time, like a muscle’s involuntary contraction. “Still, this has got to be priceless.”
She shrugged with another soft creak of leather. “I left you my card for a reason. Can’t turn around and complain when you use it, can I?”
“Yeah. About that…” I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, whatever the hell that meant, but I had to know. “Why did you give me the card?”
As she spoke, the ever-present rasp in her voice strengthened, harsh and grating. “The world’s a toilet, but some people get shit on more than others. Seems to me you’re in line to get more than your share.” Before I could ask what that meant, she continued. “Speaking of, how’s the whole Crow thing treating you?”
It was my turn to shrug. “Turns out it’s a bust. Strong enough to ruin my life, but too weak to make it as a Cape.”
“That’s… unexpected.”
“That’s why I need this.”
“Going out on your own terms? I can appreciate that.” Before I could say more, she raised a gauntleted hand. “I don’t want to know the details. Figure I’ll hear about it on a vid or something; you and your sweet little ass going down in a blaze of glory. Just make sure whoever you aim that at is someone you want dead, because once you squeeze the trigger, there are no takebacks.”
In my mind, I saw Mom die—felt her die—all over again. “That’s not a problem.”
“A man of conviction. In this day and age, that might be even rarer than the toy I brought you.” She swung one impossibly long leg up and over the body of her bike and brought the electric engine to life with the flick of a switch. “Guess this is it then. I’d tell you to look me up in a few years, once your balls have finished dropping and you’re ready for some grown-up fun, but I’m pretty sure you’ll be dead long before that happens.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re right.” I watched as she pulled away through the carnage that had been some of L.A.’s finest gangbangers. Within moments, her bike’s tail light had faded into the night.
“Goodbye, Your Majesty.”
•—•—•
I didn’t have a chance in hell of climbing the wall I’d fallen from, let alone doing it in the dark. Luckily, I didn’t have to. I followed the wall around to one of the main gates. There, I flashed my student ID to the guards on duty. The Academy scanners didn’t emit so much as a warble as I carried the gun through, and within ten minutes, I was back in my dorm room.
I had both transportation and a weapon.
One month to go.
Nothing was going to stop me now.
CHAPTER 62
“What would you like to talk about in today’s session, Damian?” Alexa was all in black, as usual, and as still as a screenshot behind Dr. Gibbings’ wooden desk.
“I don’t know. The Graduation Games, maybe? That and the dance are the only things anyone wants to talk about these days.”
The former-Cape studied me for a minute or so, and I wondered what it was she saw. The distance between us—a distance that had started to narrow after summer break—now seemed like an un-crossable chasm. I
