I thought about Joon Szymanski as he squeezed the breath from my dear sister’s body.
This ended here. I was about to crack down on the Ratking when something tugged on my veins like wires. Somehow, without knowing how, I knew it was coming from a bottom drawer in his desk. Inside were several stormtech phials, most of them broken.
Except one. It was still full of stormtech.
It was in my palm before I knew what I was doing, stormtech rushing to my jaws and sticky saliva flooding my gums. The blue poison coiled and twisted inside. The stormtech in my body matched it, the two clawing at each other in unison. It was like I already had it inside me. Suddenly all corners of the room were kilometres away and it was just me and the rhythmic pounding of my body. My skin was the outer reaches of my perception, holding my senses in. My palm heavy with the phial’s weight. I could try some. Just a little. Just the whole thing. It would be fine. I needed this. Needed it more than anything. I’d earned it.
I could kill Montenegro. No one had to know. I imagined the blue purity melting down my stomach, seeping its cool, soothing goodness into every parched crack.
And I reached for my razornade.
33
Haunted Heads
Heavy footfalls, fast approaching. My hand slithered back as Kowalski appeared in the doorway. I blinked. Squinting hard. My vision sharpening like a lens to focus on Kowalski’s flushed face.
‘I see you found our friend here,’ she said, piling into the room. ‘Oh, is this the accident you mentioned? What did you do, big guy? Sit on him?’
No answer.
‘What do you have there, Vak?’ Her voice was suddenly artificially calm. Like she was trying to soothe a dangerous animal that’s clawed out of its cage. I couldn’t reply. ‘I think I should take that.’ Her hand stretched out, palm upwards. A limb made out of bone, blood and meaty muscle. I could hear her joints clicking. ‘Give it to me, Vak. Give it to me now.’
I swallowed. She wasn’t an enemy. She was a friend. A good friend.
Before I could think, I dropped it into her palm and stepped back, breathing hard.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
I realised my hands were shaking. I meshed them together behind my back, my knuckles grinding together, willing my body to de-escalate.
Kowalski levelled an unreadable expression my way. Then something seemed to snap behind her, tugging her into motion as she wheeled on Montenegro and thrust the phial under his nose. ‘How long have you been dealing?’
Defiance started to build up in his eyes. But one glance at me and my razornade was enough to snuff it out. ‘More than a Compass year,’ he muttered.
‘And how many?’ Katherine’s voice had taken on a dangerous tone.
‘Twenty-five a day,’ I answered for him, and found my voice was raw, as if I’d been screaming. ‘Minimum quota.’
‘Minimum,’ Kowalski repeated. Heat seemed to lash off her skin. ‘Twenty-five minimum.’ She withdrew a palmerlog and flashed it in Montenegro’s face. ‘Did you sell to this person?’
‘You think I keep track of everyone I sell to?’
Kowalski’s mouth became a grim line as she drew her thin-gun and stuck it against the knee that wasn’t shattered. ‘If you’ve got any brains, you better rack them fast. Did you sell to him?’
Montenegro squinted at the image for a long while before glancing up at Katherine. ‘Yeah. I sold to him.’
Kowalski nodded and cracked the butt of the thin-gun into his nose. Montenegro jerked back with a sharp cry and the palmerlog went clattering to the floor. On it was a young boy. Maybe sixteen or so with a mop of sandy hair and sharp features, grinning in a sun-washed room. Katherine’s nephew. The boy who’d committed the terrorist attack that toppled the building.
‘He was just a kid!’ Katherine’s fist slammed into Montenegro’s jaw again, again, again. She dragged him out of his seat, his shirt ripping, and slammed him against the wall, their faces inches apart. She slapped him so hard his head snapped sideways. ‘You killed a kid!’ she spluttered, her blows becoming weaker and weaker. ‘You killed an innocent kid. How could you? How could you? How could—’
I wrestled her away. ‘Let go of me!’ she roared, trying to batter me away as Montenegro slid groaning to the floor. ‘I’m going to kill him! I’m going to tear his throat out. What sort of world does this? He was just a happy, innocent kid!’
‘Katherine, don’t.’ I glanced down at the picture of her nephew, this bright-eyed young man with his whole life ahead of him, cut down by this evil. ‘Don’t do this to yourself,’ I whispered through a tight throat. ‘He deserves it. But if you kill him, he’ll win. They’ll all win.’
I felt her shiver with rage. ‘He was seventeen,’ she snarled at the whimpering stormdealer at her feet. ‘He never hurt anyone, never hurt a soul.’ The venom and rage deflated out of her voice with every word, like whatever strength she’d bottled up had bled dry. Her head rested against my chest, her eyes squeezed shut. I wrapped my arms tight around her. The two of us just holding each other for a long moment. Then we stood apart. ‘And here I was meant to keep you out of trouble,’ she half-sniffed, half-chuckled.
Montenegro’s face was swelling with bruises, one eye shut and already crusted with blood. ‘I’m going to lose my job for this,’ she muttered, low enough that our prisoner couldn’t hear.
‘Tell Kindosh it was me,’ I said.
Katherine shook her head. ‘No way. This is on me.’
‘You can’t afford suspension,’ I said. ‘Kindosh hates me anyway. Not like she can fire me.’
Katherine smiled thinly and reached to pat my shoulder. The Ratking was starting to rouse himself, and I wasn’t in the mood to let him jerk me around any longer.
I squatted down on my haunches next to him. ‘I think you know
