The Fall of Io Page 5

  She unstrapped the harness that sheathed the half-dozen knives looped around her body, ankles and thighs, and then gently hung it on the stand next to her bed. Her big dagger stayed strapped to her lower back; that one stayed on her person except for when she bathed. She tore off her sweat-soaked sewer-drenched shirt and pants and tossed them haphazardly into a corner bin. Ella sniffed her shoulders; speaking of bathing, she badly needed a shower.

  First, she needed to decompress. Ella opened the fridge and took out a blue can of barely-chilled beer. She had taken a liking to it from her unfortunate stint at the Academy. This particular brand of beer was rather difficult to find. Supposedly the name of the beer was Australian for beer, although she had always thought the word “beer” was already the Australian word for beer. The English language was inexact and confusing.

  She climbed out of the window onto the fire escape and tucked herself into the corner where the staircase met the wall. Ella cracked open the can and took a long swig. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve and stared up at the hazy sky. She used to climb onto her roof back in Crate Town and star-watch for hours. That felt like a million years ago. So much had changed, yet everything still felt the same.

  “Worse actually,” she grumbled, taking another sip.

  I think you are looking back at your time in Crate Town with rose-colored glasses.

  Ella didn’t bother answering the alien in her head. Her old home may have been a dangerous slum, but it was home. It felt like home. And in Crate Town, she was someone, the Black Cat, the Samrãjñī.

  You realize you were the only one who called yourself the Samrãjñī.

  “At least they knew who I was.” Here in the endless expanse of the largest city in the world, Ella was just another small-time nobody packed like a rat once again living hand-to-mouth.

  At least Tokyo, compared to Crate Town, was relatively safe. That didn’t mean there weren’t plenty of bad guys here. One neighbor found her alone out here the first week she moved in and got a little too close. She kissed his shoulder with the tip of her blade and sent him crawling away less one pint of blood. They had an arrangement now; he paid her a hundred yen every time they ran into each other. It was unfortunate for him they were next-door neighbors.

  She was nearly finished with the second beer when the window three units down opened. Her hand instinctively drifted toward the dagger at her lower back. An old woman stuck her head out, eyed Ella, and then hung some shirts on the railing. Strangely, that comforted Ella. Hanging clothes was a time-honored tradition in every impoverished place, no matter where in the world.

  “It seems my lot in life is to never escape these places,” she grumbled, hefting a third beer, debating whether she should crack it open. That was probably a bad idea. She was already getting tipsy, being a tiny person who still wore kids’ clothes.

  You had a chance when you went to the Academy.

  She closed her eyes. “But I screwed it up.”

  Ella had tried; she really did. She just wasn’t cut out to be a Prophus agent, no matter how much she and everyone around her tried to make it work. Even with Io in her head helping her, or perhaps in spite of Io, it just wasn’t a good fit.

  You might have a problem with authority, but that is not the real reason you got expelled from the Academy. There are those thirty citations you manage to rack up in a span of eighteen months.

  “Their stupid rules are stupid.”

  That one time you brought a knife to a hand-to-hand sparring match.

  “Perkins had it out for me. She put me up against Shepherd, and he outweighed me by ten stone!”

  And then there was that black market and gambling ring you ran in the dorm rooms.

  Ella shrugged. “OK, that probably wasn’t my best idea, but I was broke and bored. We weren’t allowed to have jobs and everyone else got their money from home. What did you expect me to do?”

  Not embezzle from the Prophus.

  “And now look at what we’re doing.”

  Io laughed, which to be honest was awfully unsettling. Quasing laughter sounded like tussling dogs. It was strangely infectious though. Perhaps it was because Io’s creepy laugh was echoing in her head, or perhaps they were finally starting to get along.

  Their initial meeting had been tumultuous, to say the least. A fervently stubborn Ella and a demanding asshole Quasing. What could go wrong?

  Hey!

  They had eventually come to an understanding, which led to a reluctant partnership forged by their survival being tied to each other, first in Crate Town and then during Ella’s colossal failure at the Academy. The two had almost formed a friendship, or at the very least a stable working relationship.

  Whatever. Classrooms and studying and rigid schedules weren’t for her. Not to mention the dozens of rules they had tried to make her follow. The streets were more her natural habitat. Ella preferred it, honestly. She swung her legs back through the window and into her musty, stale room. She shut it behind her, locked it, and threw the curtains closed, enveloping her apartment in darkness.

  Ella climbed over the small table next to the window and rolled onto her bed. Yawning, she positioned her body so her back was against the wall and, as part of her nightly ritual, touched the dagger still strapped to its holster against her lower back, just in case. Comforted, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to fall asleep.

  Io waited until Ella’s breathing fell into a steady cadence before sitting her body up. She wasn’t very good at controlling hosts, and the girl was an annoyingly light sleeper. Io moved over to the table and painstakingly pushed the clutter aside. Teaching the girl to put things away was an ongoing struggle that would probably take the rest of one of their lives.

  Once she was satisfied with the work space, Io pulled a laptop out from a cardboard box tucked under Ella’s bed. She booted it up and tapped into the Prophus network with her previous host, Emily Curran’s, account. The Prophus administrators must have forgotten to close it after her status moved from missing to KIA, so now Io was using it as a back door.

  She was hesitant at first, thinking the omission intentional. However, after a year of intermittently logging in and finding the account truly dormant, her confidence in being able to leverage this oversight as a back door grew. As long as she was careful with Emily’s account and did not initiate changes that raised flags, Io should be able to continue working the Prophus network to her and Ella’s advantage.

  That was how the Burglar Alarms had been able to break into the Prophus safe house tonight, and how Ella had been able to skim from them ever since she was expelled from the Academy. She had been miserable there, and her tenure cut short prematurely at eighteen months. Io had thought Ella was actually making solid progress and was on her way to becoming a competent agent, but her old habits and ways eventually crept back in, and she fell apart.

  The girl was a caged bird, chafing at the curfews and rules, struggling to get caught up with the other students, many of whom were military recruits from all over the world. All while trying to learn to write and speak English. It wasn’t for her lack of trying. She just never had a chance. Throw in a bad breakup, and the whole experiment was a disaster.

  Just like Io had planned.

  Not that Io had necessarily wanted the girl to fail. Ella’s failure was Io’s as well. They shared a body after all, and there were many skills that the girl needed to learn if they were to survive. Io wanted Ella to have the abilities of a Prophus agent without necessarily having to wear the yoke of being a Prophus.

  The Quasing had known her days with the Prophus were numbered from the moment Tao had laid out his threat to Io’s life if anything ever happened to the girl. One could argue that Tao was simply ensuring Ella’s safety, but there was a greater implication to Tao’s words. It told Io that she was expendable. The Prophus may keep her around now, but for how long? If her life was contingent upon that of a short-lived human, Io did not believe she had any v
alue to the Prophus whatsoever.

  So while she did her best to help Ella grow, assisting her with language, technical and combat skills, Io did little to help Ella adapt to the Prophus organization, which honestly was more alien to the girl than having an actual alien inhabit her body. When the situation came to a head and Ella was faced with expulsion from the academy, and by association the entire Prophus organization, Io embraced it.

  Now, the two were on their own, no longer beholden to either the Prophus or the Genjix. They were free to carve their own paths forward, and accountable to no one. That is, as long as they could stay hidden. That was where Io’s work came in.

  For the next hour, Io scoured the Prophus intelligence network. Things had been quiet on this front between the two factions for the better part of a year. The Genjix had been busy consolidating their hold on India. The Prophus had mostly abandoned the entire Asian continent and had moved to defending the countries around Australia. Japan was technically neutral territory, but it trod a delicate line to keep its neutrality due to its close proximity to China, which was the center of Genjix power.

  As of this very moment, a little more than a hundred Prophus teams were operating in all of Southeast Asia on some three dozen assignments, with three specifically located in Japan. One was a large team managing an extensive surveillance network embedded into the nation’s fishing industry. Another was supporting the actual fishing industry, in which the Prophus silently held a large financial stake. Io pulled up the summary on the third team. They were working in a Hokkaido Wolf refuge.

  There was strangely no information on the team that had crashed that safe house earlier tonight. If Io had the aptitude to make Ella’s face frown, she would have. If she hadn’t needed to stay under the Prophus network’s radar, she could have submitted a query to Command to glean more information, but that would be a dead giveaway. This team wasn’t supposed to be here. Something must have happened. She made a mental note to have Ella stay low for a few days until things blew over.

  Io switched over to the channels on Genjix activities and flags. There were few alerts out of the ordinary, other than the occasional security chatter picked up by surveillance. Wait, Io had spoken too soon. The safe house that the Burglar Alarms had raided tonight had just been flagged as compromised. She read the report the team just sent.

  “Really, a gang of thugs?” muttered Io. “That is giving the Burglar Alarms far too much credit.”

  The report contained a pretty accurate description of Ella, but the odds of anyone matching that to her were slim. More importantly, Command would probably shut down the safe house now. Io had hoped it was a location they could farm for months, but Ella exposing herself to the agents had put an end to that opportunity.

  Other than that, the region – this city specifically – was relatively quiet. That was what was most important. Io’s primary focus these days was to just stay out of everyone’s way. She no longer wished to be the pawn of either faction. If she and Ella could live out the girl’s remaining days in obscurity and stay out of history, Io would consider this a life well-lived.

  The screen flickered and dimmed. Io checked the battery level. The laptop was about to shut down. She must have forgotten to charge it last night. Io reached for the power cord and fumbled trying to plug it into the tiny grooves. It was like trying to do brain surgery in mittens. It reminded Io of her brief frustrating stint inhabiting arctic seals.

  It took seven tries before Io managed to fit the three prongs into the tiny holes, but then she accidentally elbowed the screen, knocking the laptop off the table. Fortunately, it was a military-grade machine and could easily withstand the impact if it hit the floor. Unfortunately, it did not hit the floor but rather Ella’s foot. Io cursed as she lost her balance. She bounced off the table, then off the bed cornerpost, and ended up sprawled onto the floor. Io felt herself lose control as the girl roused.

  Ella opened her eyes and frowned when she discovered that she was wedged between two pieces of furniture. She sucked in her breath and scrunched her face together. “Ow. Why am I sleeping on the floor? Why do I hurt all over?”

  I had a little mishap. Go back to bed.

  Ella groaned and pulled herself to her feet, making another round of hissing sounds when she put weight on the bruised foot the laptop had smashed. “What did you do to me, Alien?”

  Sorry about that.

  Ella looked down at the laptop flipped open on the floor. She picked it up and pieced the events together. “Anything on the radar?”

  A small blip, nothing that should not pass. Lay low for a few days. Make sure nothing comes out of the night’s events. The Prophus have no reason to think it was you, but you did us no favors by showing your face and opening your mouth. I will need to dig further. Go back to bed.

  “I’m not sorry. I had to do it.”

  We can agree to disagree, but you are wrong. Daiki was likely in little danger. The Prophus agents would not have harmed the boy, and the odds of them handing him over to the police was nil.

  Ella stretched her arms in the air and turned toward the small mirror hanging crooked on the wall. Her fingers instinctively brushed aside a loose strand of hair. The hair on the top of her head had grown down just past her shoulders, but it was still too short for the style she was aiming for. She had fawned over it when she found this particular hairstyle in a fashion magazine. Her sides were shaved with horizontal lines that wrapped around her head. That did not turn out as well as she had hoped. That was the last time she listened to Daiki’s fashion advice.

  “How much longer do you need to use my body?”

  An hour, maybe more. Now that the safe house is compromised, we need to locate another Prophus mark. Can you do me a favor and plug the laptop in?

  Ella did that and then climbed over the bed frame like a cat and burrowed herself into the sheets, pulling her knees to her body until she was curled into a ball. “Don’t forget to wake me up tomorrow. I have a meeting with those Kuhn guys.”

  I never forget. I am millions of years old and have more knowledge and experience than all the humans in this city put together, but sure, I can be your alarm clock.

  “Yeah, yeah. Just don’t make me late.” She yawned and closed her eyes. A few minutes drifted by. Ella opened her eyes again. “Io?”

  What is it now?

  “I can’t sleep.”

  I do not care. I have work to do.

  “Tell me an alien story.”

  No.

  Chapter Five

  The Hard Peace

  Ella not only survived Crate Town, she thrived. She left the safety of Wiry Madras’s nest at thirteen and set off on her own. For the next few years, she worked the streets, establishing relationships with the locals, running cons and brokering contraband transactions.

  She became known as the Black Cat and developed a reputation as a savvy operator, someone worth knowing in the streets of Crate Town. She managed to save up enough to purchase her own container home by the time she was fifteen. By nineteen, she had graduated to large-scale cons.

  That was when we met.

  A shadow loomed over Alexandra Mengsk, blocking out her sun. Shura the Scalpel, or just Shura to the people she wasn’t trying to kill, pried one eye open, then the other. The silhouette of a dark, bald, stocky man in black military armor towered over her. An assault rifle was slung behind his back and a gas mask hung around his neck.

  “Adonis,” he bowed stiffly. For some strange reason, he was looking off to the side. “The black market dealer has arrived at the hotel.”

  “Did they bring the merchandise?”

  “It appears so, but it is not verified. Three rectangular crates with dimensions consistent with our intel.” He continued to avert his eyes.

  “What are you doing, Kloos?” she asked.

  Mayur Kloos was her second in command. The two had met during the construction of the India Bio Comm Array two years ago when she wa
s consolidating her hold over India. He had fought alongside her ever since, earning himself a position as general of all of her forces in India. While he had ridden her coattails to increase his standing within the Genjix, it was Shura who benefited most from the relationship. Kloos was a cunning tactician, an independent thinker and most importantly a fiercely loyal commander. It would only be a matter of time before she lost him to his own command.

  Or a Holy One with sufficient standing.

  That was true. Several Quasing had already inquired about his availability to become their next vessel. Shura had so far managed to rebuff their overtures, but likely not for much longer. That was the unfortunate cost of competent underlings. The only way she could retain Kloos’s services after he was raised to a vessel was if the Holy One was willing to report to her. Unfortunately, Shura’s Holy One, Tabs, did not play well with most of her kind.

  “You are unclothed.” Kloos continued to stare past the balcony and held out her translucent shift.

  Shura rolled her eyes and sat up from the lounge chair. “Kloos, you’ve saved my life countless times. You’ve held my intestines in your hands. I think we’re well past modesty. Look at me when you address me. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, Adonis.” He moved his eyes to lock on hers. He was technically following her order.

  Shura grabbed the shift and wrapped it around her shoulders. She glanced at the two balconies to her left that would be her stepping-stones. The deal was running late, which was fine with her. It gave her more time to work on her tan. “How is he handling the delay?”

  “Badly. We don’t even need surveillance. His yelling is audible through the walls. We were worried he might back out when the dealer was fifteen minutes late.”

  Shura smirked. “He probably wouldn’t have stayed if he weren’t desperate for this to go through.”

  Rurik Melnichenko was Shura’s chief rival for a seat on the Genjix Council. He had an obsession with punctuality and what he considered his “valuable time,” one of the many failings she had taken advantage of on numerous occasions. The Russian oligarch was from a very old and influential family, and controlled a large and powerful swath of Russia within the Genjix sphere of influence. Shura, on the other hand, controlled only the war-ravaged resource-deprived India territory. There should not have even been a contest between them, but due to her competence and his lack of it, the battle for the lone open seat on the Genjix Council was tightly contested.