Jacques lowered his head as the cops pushed the kids into the van. Then turned away.
He was right. The only thing that could stop the toffs was a revolt, and how likely was that?
Logan’s father had done more to try to protect Alice when they took her away than anyone had for these kids. Did the cops buy off their parents, offer them a chance to get out of the ZUS in return for their sons and daughters, or just grab some of the many kids who were living rough in the streets?
There wasn’t much chance of anyone rebelling, either way. No-one cared. They just wanted to survive.
Either way, this wasn’t a world to be weak and pretty.
The end came a month later.
Angelique had gone off with a client, as Logan sat on his rotting chair in the shade of the derelict old bank and watched over the others. The usual suspects were scowling across the street, ogling the girls, and selling drugs and whatever they’d managed to steal the previous day. Staring at him, trying to intimidate him.
Just another day in Section 19.
Angelique screamed. By the time Logan reached her, she was crouched on the ground with a blood-stained lip and a bruise over her eye. The man she’d picked up stood over her, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her to her feet. Then punched her again.
Logan wrapped his arm around the man’s neck, and pulled him away from her. The man struggled, and Logan’s free hand slammed into his kidneys.
Then the man grunted and stamped down on Logan’s feet, twisting hard in Logan’s grip as he did so, and pulling himself free. The man turned, his face contorted in fear, and swung his fist at Logan’s face. Logan dodged.
Then punched the guy with all his strength. The sound of the man’s nose crunching just encouraged him to hit the face again, and harder.
The outside world faded away as the man’s face became the scars of the suit-wearing, muscular heavy who took Alice. Then the grey-haired wrinkles of Morgan’s lawyer. Then Morgan himself. Logan punched again and again, then slammed the man back against the hard stone wall of the bank.
“Stop,” Angelique yelled, and grabbed Logan’s arm.
But he was far too strong for her to pull him away. Logan continued punching, again and again, until the limp body slid down to the ground, and lay there, motionless.
Then he punched the man some more.
By the time he was done, standing over the man, sweating and gasping for breath, it was too late.
“What did you do?” Angelique yelled. She shook as she crouched and checked the man. He didn’t move as she touched him, and Logan knew from her eyes as she looked up at him that he’d just killed a man.
Her eyes were wide, her lips quivered, and her chest heaved. The dead man was dressed in a smart, tailored suit, not the T-shirts and rough cloth so common in Section 19.
He was an aristo, a toff, come down to the ZUS for a bit of rough entertainment with a girl he assumed no-one cared about. But someone would certainly care about him. They’d miss him soon, and come looking.
“Go,” he said. She didn’t need to be there, or anywhere nearby, when the cops arrived.
And they would, soon enough.
CHAPTER 7
The girl turned away from Bairamov, and pointed down the street she had just emerged from. It turned to the left off the main street through the village, and led between two rows of houses—the same kind of radiation-resistant curved bunkers as the others they’d seen across the planet—then petered out into the fields about a hundred metres away.
“Is that a good idea?” Desoto said.
Bairamov looked over the girl’s head, and peered down the street. “Please remember to say sir when you’re questioning my orders in future. Our beloved political officer said to show our faces and smile at the locals. You two are prettier than me. Get in there and do your jobs.”
“Yes, sir.”
Logan nodded to the girl.
“Let’s see what we can do for you.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I have no money to pay for a doctor to help. Or any way to get them here if I did.”
“Don’t the mines have doctors?”
The girl turned, and led the way along the street. “Only for the miners.”
“What does your father do?” Desoto said.
“He lost his arm in the mines two years ago. He can’t work there any more. He has a pension, but it doesn’t pay for much.”
Logan fell into position a few metres behind the girl, taking slow and careful steps so he wouldn’t risk colliding with her if she stopped, and staying far enough back that she wouldn’t be in the crossfire if someone did attack them.
They were heading on their own into what may well be an ambush. What a great way to fill their day.
But if her father actually was sick, Heinrichs, the section medic, might be able to do some good. And, just maybe, that would make the rest of the village feel better about helping them find the insurgents.
Desoto moved ahead of him, watching the houses on the left of the street. Logan watched the right.
Smoke rose from a chimney at the side of the next house, and the smell of burning wood and roasting meat filled the air as they passed by. A wrinkled, grey-haired lady with squinting eyes sat on the steps outside the door, lifting the hem of her black dress to scrape at sores on her calves. She glanced up at Logan, then returned to her task.
A young boy, maybe six years old, sat between that house and the next, playing in the thick dirt with something long and yellow, with spikes protruding from the side.
Logan’s eyes followed the boy as he approached. What was that thing? The boy smiled at him and held up his hand. Empty eye-sockets stared at Logan from the dog’s skull he clasped tightly in his fingers.
Logan glanced back along the street. Bairamov and Gallo still stood at the corners, one on each side of the street, scanning their surroundings as Logan and Desoto followed the girl. Sweat dripped from Logan’s forehead, onto his eyes. He blinked it away, but his skin felt warm.
His heart was pounding, and that didn’t help. He could pull his hand out of the arm of the suit to wipe sweat away, but, last time he did it, the contortions required had almost dislocated his shoulder. He was in no hurry to try that again.
“Alice, suit temperature down five degrees.”
Fans whirred deep inside the suit, and a blast of cold air blew on his face from the vents around the helmet, forcing some of the hot air of the village away from his face.
He shivered as the temperature rapidly dropped, but he could feel the sweat drying on his skin as it cooled.
They were half-way down the street now, and the girl had shown no sign of slowing.
“Which house is yours?”
She glanced back at him and smiled, then pointed down the street. “Just a couple more houses.”
“Which one?” Desoto said.
She pointed at the last house on the left, beyond which the packed-down dirt of the street began to merge into the fields outside the village.
“That one.”
She moved on, passing the next house, with Desoto trailing behind her. Logan looked away from her and glanced toward the house ahead of them just as glass exploded from it, out into the street.
The sharp cracks of rapid-fire high-velocity rounds filled the air, and raised spurts of brown dirt as they hit the ground near Desoto’s feet, then rose up the front of the house behind him as the recoil took the shooter’s aim higher.
The girl didn’t even glance back.
At the noise, she ran headlong down the street, and hit the dirt behind the steps in front of the next house along. Then she covered her head and lay as low as she could, pressing her body down into the dirt, and fumbling with the bag that hung around her neck.