Pacifica Page 9

  Ross moved closer. He remained standing.

  “Something bad happened.” He gave a weak smile, though nothing about this was funny. “I … Adam and I … we thought…”

  His father took a sip from his steaming coffee cup.

  “We went to see the riots. We left from the museum last night. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  His father set down his coffee.

  Ross cleared his throat. “The City Patrol thought we were Shorelings.”

  “Don’t use that word,” his father said, annoyed. “It’s slang, and it has unfavorable connotations.”

  “Sorry,” Ross mumbled. “The patrol thought we were part of the riots. Things got out of control, and this girl was hurt. We took her to this shop.”

  “You met a girl in Lower Noram?” His father shook his head, laughing bitterly. “I see. Who saw you? Were any pictures taken?”

  Ross felt his brows draw together. “No. I mean, I don’t think so.”

  “Which is it?”

  Ross felt the pounding of his heart hit harder and harder, until his whole body was shaking from the reverberations. This wasn’t about what anyone saw or who might think poorly of him.

  “It wasn’t like that.” His hands had balled into fists. “Why can’t you just listen? Just one time, listen to me.” His voice cracked off the walls.

  Ross’s father lifted his brows. He set down his fork. His hand rose, as if to say, go ahead, while Ross took a breath to steady himself.

  “I ditched Tersley at the museum. He tracked us down to the docks. He found where we were and came in, and then he shot the girl, okay? She didn’t do anything to him, and he shot her, and I don’t know if she’s stunned, or injured, or dead. We ran and everyone was there.” Ross pulled at the hair at the back of his skull. “Adam fell out of the car. I told the driver to stop, but he wouldn’t. He’s still there, I think. Or, I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  His father was still for a long time.

  “Again,” he said. “Did anyone get a good look at you?”

  Ross nearly crumbled.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Sit down.”

  Ross collapsed into the nearest chair.

  George rose and turned to leave, but before he did he placed one hand on his son’s shoulder. Ross sank as his father’s grip tightened. There was a fierceness in his tone when he said, “Stay here.”

  His father left the room. Left Ross to his thoughts, to the shouts and screams of the riots, and the girl’s face, and her wild hair, so unlike the polished look of the girls here. To the “86” on her slender neck, and the feel of her head against his shoulder while he ran, and to Adam.

  Adam.

  Soon his father was back. He sat in the chair next to Ross.

  “We’re going to get in front of it,” his father said. “This is going to blow over.”

  He thought he should feel relieved, but he felt nothing.

  “What does that mean?” His voice was ragged.

  “It means I’m going to take care of it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  His father tilted his head, seeming to consider this. After a moment he said, “You were never there. You’ll never talk about what happened. Not with your friends, not with anyone. Adam’s had some trouble in the past. His family will address this quietly.”

  Ross’s heel began to pound against the wooden floor.

  “What do you mean trouble?” Adam freaked out if his homework assignments weren’t finished the night before. He saved his leftover lunches for the next day and pointed out when Ross’s socks didn’t match. “Trouble” was not a word Ross associated with Adam.

  “His parents knew their son’s adjustment to this area wouldn’t be easy. Children raised where Adam was face significant hardships. Drugs. Resistance to authority.” He waved his hand as if to say, and so on.

  Something had to be wrong with Ross’s brain, because he wasn’t following.

  “So they know what happened? Someone told his parents.”

  “They’ll be informed.”

  “And people are looking for him, right? That’s the vice president’s son.” He couldn’t believe he felt the need to clarify this.

  “He’ll be found soon enough.”

  The confidence in his father’s voice didn’t reassure him.

  “What about the girl?”

  His father sighed. “The girl is no longer your concern.”

  He understood then. His father was fabricating a lie. Like it was nothing.

  “Dad, you can’t…” But he couldn’t finish, because his father could. The president was the most powerful man in Noram, in the whole North American Alliance, maybe even the world.

  “It was a mistake, Ross. Don’t beat yourself up for it.”

  A breath huffed from Ross’s throat.

  Once, in a track competition, he’d forgotten to pace himself and burned out before the last lap, coming in dead last. That had been a mistake. This was something else entirely.

  Ross leaned over his knees, the guilt making it impossible to sit upright. “This isn’t right. I need to go back. Or … report it to the City Patrol. Something.”

  “You need to grow up.”

  Ross lifted his chin.

  “Do you know why we never got you a pet?” There was no disappointment in his father’s tone; he was simply stating facts, and somehow that was worse.

  “No.”

  “Because you couldn’t see anything beyond yourself,” he said. “Responsibility is about sacrifice. It’s about seeing the bigger picture. If this information gets out, the violence below the cliffline will escalate. Relocation will fail. People will die—not just one or two—and those that survive won’t blame you, they’ll blame me. Then it won’t matter that I’ve kept us out of a second war with the SAF, because a civil war will be the only thing on their minds. Every decision I’ve made that has fed and housed and provided protection for the seven million people left in the Alliance these last seven years will be forgotten, because they will only know that my son was involved in the attack of a Shoreling girl.” He took a slow breath, sizing up his son with a tired, weighted gaze. “We are on the tipping point, Ross, and the things I do each day determine which way we fall.”

  Ross hung his head.

  “Now,” said his father, standing. “Eat something. Get some rest. Choose better friends and let this be the moment you became a man.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “YOU’RE BACK.”

  Marin blinked. Her breath was a loud noise, screaming through her eardrums. With a groan, she extended her fingers from their tightly furled fists. A second later she could turn her head. She was not stuck as her mother had once said. She could move.

  “Be slow,” a man said. “You’ve been shot.”

  Hiro. She was in his shop. Cloudy memories came back to her of the last moments before she’d been hit. They were dreamlike, soft around the edges, and she couldn’t quite tell what was real and not.

  “I … know … that…” she managed.

  “Just stunned,” he said. “Que suerte, huh?”

  Lucky? Oh, she was all luck tonight.

  “They have a setting on their weapons,” he explained. “It knocks you down and hurts awhile, but no permanent damage. Unless you have a heart problem, of course. Or epilepsy. Or…”

  “I get it,” said Marin. Things were loosening now, thawing. She stretched her arms out to her sides, dragging her fingertips across the floor. She tried to push up, but couldn’t. A few breaths, and she tried again.

  Finally, she succeeded in making it to a crouch, gaze drawn to Hiro’s tight frown. Apart from a bruise on the side of his head he looked all right.

  “There,” he said. “Better, yes?”

  The initial freeze had worn off, but her nerves felt electric and twitchy. She blinked too much. Her shoulders jumped. But apart from the wrist she was pretty sure she’d rebent the wrong way when she’d falle
n to the floor, she appeared to still be in one piece. The only evidence of what had happened was a purple bruise just under her collarbone—a small circle that stung a little as she pressed her fingertips to it.

  “Better,” she said. “How long was I out?”

  “Some time. More than an hour.”

  More than an hour, defenseless. Anyone could have shoved a knife between her ribs in that time.

  Gripping a corner of the checkered quilt on the cot, she heaved herself onto the creaky mattress, aided by Hiro’s hand beneath her elbow. The bedside table was tipped over, the lamp shattered on the ground beside it. She remembered the crashes from the front room, and any relief she’d felt instantly ran dry.

  “It’s all right,” he said when she tried to stand and staggered. “Sit for a moment. Rest.” He acted as if the roar of the crowd outside were no more than a wind chime.

  The riots had never been like this before.

  “Those guys I came with…” she began.

  “Gone,” said Hiro. “They went with the man who shot you.”

  Of course they had. How easy it had been to believe they weren’t a threat. They looked no older than her, talked to her like they were on the same side. She’d fallen right into their trap. The second she’d been cornered, he and his friend had called in the muscle, and the next thing she knew she was facedown on the floor.

  She should have known better. They were kanshu, after all.

  “How did you know them?” Hiro asked.

  She peeked around him through a crack in the curtain at the front room. Clutter littered the floor near the entrance, now barricaded with boxes. The tiny stage was in pieces, shattered across the laminate store floor.

  “I didn’t know them at all.” It had felt like she had when they’d been running from la limpieza together, but that kind of kinship wasn’t real. It was just like it had been growing up on the island. They’d all work together when they had to, and then she’d go right back to being the muck on the bottom of everyone else’s boots.

  A crash came against the side of the building outside, making her jump. Then, in increments, it grew quiet, as if the mob were moving away. An eerie silence filled the night, putting her more on edge.

  When she looked back at Hiro, she found him frowning at her.

  “Well,” he said. “Someone was looking for them, so either they were important, or in a lot of trouble.”

  Based on how fast they had run, she guessed the latter.

  “Something about their faces,” he mused, scratching his chin. “Familiar, yes?”

  She pictured Blue Eyes—the flex of his jaw, and the smudges of dust on his pale skin. The way his hair stuck out sideways when he scratched his fingers through it. There was something vaguely familiar about him, though she knew for a fact she’d never seen him before. It was as if he looked like someone she knew, though she couldn’t place who that might be.

  “You have a lot of kanshu coming in to buy your junk?”

  “Junk?” His chin pulled inward. “I take it you were not raised in a church.”

  Her eyes lifted above the stove on the opposite side of the narrow room, to the white wooden relic in the shape of a cross. At the bottom knelt a tiny gold figure, hands clasped together in prayer.

  “Sure I was,” she said. “The church of liars.”

  He laughed, and the warm sound of it relaxed the knots in her shoulders.

  “My mother prayed to a friend of hers. Mary, full of grace.” Where Mary was when Marin had been forced to leave her home, she didn’t know, but it didn’t exactly make her a believer. “My father prayed to whoever put money in his pockets.”

  “And you?” he asked, eyes twinkling.

  “I pray to the gods of canned corn and roasted chicken.” Her knife was on the counter beside the sink. She reached for it with her good hand and tucked it into her belt. “Pretty sure they don’t hear me, though.”

  “Then perhaps you are not loud enough.” When she snorted, he only chuckled, then returned to the stove to light the burner. Atop it sat a covered pot, and he reached into a drawer for a ladle to stir the contents. She watched the slim window near the ceiling warily as shadows streaked by, stomach grumbling as the scent of spiced broth infused the stale air.

  She hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning.

  How long would it be until the kids at the library had their next meal? Until Gloria took more than a few bites for herself?

  They were all starving.

  And now she didn’t even have the tar to sell. It would be a month before the next batch was ready, and they couldn’t last that long.

  Her gaze landed on a blue suitcase in the corner she hadn’t seen earlier. The zipper was stretched, making a weaving line across the middle.

  “You going somewhere, Hiro?” she asked.

  Hiro hesitated at the stove, then filled another bowl for himself. “You’ll stay here until curfew is up. There are many dangers out tonight.”

  Firelight filled the main room, flickering across the floor. Then darkness again.

  “You’re not answering,” she said. “Things getting rough?” Gloria wouldn’t like hearing about that. Hiro was a healer, the only option many of them had. If he was in trouble, she could arrange for protection.

  Hiro laughed weakly. “Rough? An innocent girl was just shot in my shop. No, not rough. Just another night in the docks.” He laughed again, but it ended in a tense sigh. “It’s getting worse, Marin. Surely you can see that.”

  “You think it will be better somewhere else?” she asked.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” He rubbed his chin. “My name was chosen in the lottery.”

  The bowl of soup dropped to her lap, sloshing over her thumbs. “For Pacifica.”

  “I did not think they would take me. They seemed to like that I have a medical degree, even if I don’t work for the hospital.” His cheeks flared red, and he busied his hands with the dishes.

  Maybe he didn’t work there now, but he had in the past. Gloria had once told her he’d been let go for taking supplies for the people in the neighborhood who couldn’t afford the clinics.

  She couldn’t believe he was leaving. They may not have been close, but even she knew that removing the corner post of a building would leave it unsteady. Hiro was important. She admired him, and what he did for his people.

  “They’ve announced there was so much interest, they’re opening more spots.”

  Given the riots outside, this seemed impossible. “How many?”

  “They didn’t say. I take it you did not apply.”

  She shook her head. Even if she’d wanted to, she couldn’t. She wasn’t eligible. She wasn’t an Alliance citizen.

  “A man who cleans the jail came to the library last week,” she told him. “He said the cells are all full. That they’re sending the rioters la limpieza is picking up to an offshore prison.”

  It wouldn’t be the first time the kanshu had sent Shorelings out to sea, though she doubted many people here knew much about that.

  “The jail on the oil rig.” Hiro nodded. “I have heard those rumors too.”

  This part of the story was new to her, and came as a surprise. She’d seen the oil rigs that lined Noram’s seaboard, twenty nautical miles off the coast. There was one just off the California Islands. A giant, rusting tabletop, emerging from the water. Five years ago it had been packed with workers; maybe now they were sending prisoners to do the jobs.

  “Well, if you think Pacifica is anything more, you’re a fool.”

  If there was a place out there like the one in the ads, she’d have seen it. Some time may have passed since she’d been past the California Islands, but they couldn’t scrape enough floating gomi from the water to build a place as nice as they claimed.

  Which made her wonder, not for the first time, where exactly the Shorelings were going.

  “Then I am a fool,” he said bitterly. “But a fool with faith. I am tired of treating hunger pains and mending broken
bones with weak painkillers and scrap-wood splints. I must believe there’s something better out there. My people deserve it. You deserve it.”

  She scoffed, because he wouldn’t say this if he really knew her. If he knew what she’d done.

  He sat beside her now, one hand on her shoulder. She flinched, but he didn’t move.

  “You should go too. Head north. Go to school. You’re smart. Make something of your life.”

  “I like my life the way it is, thanks very much.”

  “Oh,” he said knowingly. “Is that why you hide in Gloria’s library? Why you peddle poison to the highest bidder?” The wrinkled cracks around his eyes and mouth seemed deeper in the dim light.

  A jerk of her shoulder dislodged the gentle pressure of his hand. She pictured the broken jars of tar on the street again, though it wasn’t regret that filled her now, but a hollow kind of shame. She wasn’t meant to sell drugs; she was meant to sail the seas. To sit at the captain’s table. To command a crew and lead the people of her island, like her father before her.

  She was a corsario, proud and defiant. Not a measly drug runner who hid in the shadows.

  And yet.

  “I’ve got to eat, same as you, old man.”

  “Ah.” He raised his hands in surrender. “I am not here to judge. We could all use a new start.”

  She glanced again at his suitcase, hoping, for a moment, that he was right. Because if there was something better for him out there, maybe there was something more for her too.

  “Help!” The male shout was loud enough to make her jump. It came from the front of the store.

  She crouched behind the foot of the cot. Soup sloshed from the bowl, dripping down to the floor.

  A series of knocks, and then the voice came again.

  “Please help!”

  Hiro stared down at the knife she hadn’t realized she’d drawn until just then. Her hand tightened on the grip.

  “Be calm. I will take care of this.” He motioned for her to lower the weapon.

  She hoped he didn’t plan on taking care of it the same way he’d taken care of the guy who’d shot her. Ducking out of sight at the foot of the bed, she kept one hand firmly on her weapon.