Traitor (Rebel Stars Book 2) Read online

  "So can I eat with you?"

  She laughed. "No way, fish."

  * * *

  The next few weeks became a quiet routine. Get up, eat, go to fight class. Sometimes Benson sent him on jobs, but they were so easy they were boring, like dropping things off or watching people go places. He spent lots of time in studies, too. Lots of subjects were mandatory, like math, astronomy, and System history, but they got to explore their own subjects, too. Ced liked spaceships, aliens, and the history of the Locker.

  Kansas was the closest thing to a friend he had, and she only spoke to him during martial arts practice. Growing up, he'd spent a lot of his time alone. But he'd never been as alone as this.

  One evening at dinner, the door opened. The room hushed. Dapp walked in. His head had been completely shaved and his face had pale scars around his eyes and nose. His friends schooled in after him. They moved to the lunch line. People started talking again. Dapp and his friends got their food and sat down together.

  Ced finished and bused his tray. He had some reading to catch up on, so he headed to studies. Five other kids were there, hunched over their desk-mounted devices. Ced hurried through his math, then got back to reading about the Locker. The early days. When people like Captain Withers and Margarita Klodhoffer were fighting off the governments and corporations trying to make the Locker just like everywhere else.

  Ced got so deep in the stories he barely noticed as people came and went from studies. Then someone was standing in front of his desk. Someone with a shaved head and fresh white scars on his face. All of the other kids had gone, replaced by four of Dapp's friends.

  "Hey fish." Dapp smiled and loomed over the desk. "Miss me?"

  5

  "No way," Webber said, eyes locked on the pistol. "This wasn't part of the deal."

  The man's white face paint stretched as he smiled. "That deal was made outside. You're in Absolution now. And the rules have changed."

  Sweat slid down MacAdams' shiny scalp. "This works both ways. You got any idea what you've let inside?"

  The man's pistol twitched in his grip. "A talking ox, by the look of it. I'll let you know when I want you to speak."

  "Enough." Rada stepped forward in the wagon, palms held in front of her. "I'll be happy to tell you whatever you want to know. Though I doubt it'll be as enlightening as you imagine. In exchange, you're going to help us find who we're looking for."

  "We agreed to get you in. Nothing more."

  "We're just here to ask a few questions."

  "And for our help, you will tell us of the Swimmers?"

  She nodded. "Everything we know."

  The man lowered his gun, tapping it against his thigh. "You have a deal."

  * * *

  Faces watched from the darkness. Torches flapped in the evening breeze, which smelled of the ocean just beyond the sprawling limestone Maya palace. A few dozen ancient structures were scattered over the low, grassy hills, but most of the space had been filled in with wooden shacks. These were surrounded by porches, most of which were shaded by thatched leaves of the same variety that had covered them in the cart.

  Tiant, the gunman who'd spoken to them on arrival, had decided to gather the entire Xenoist community to the event. Rada tried to argue him out of it—she thought it would be easier to find her man by keeping a low profile—but she had news of the first Swimmer contact in a thousand years. Tiant insisted his people deserved to hear it.

  Dozens gathered on the temple steps. Some wore black and white face paint like Tiant. Others were dressed in t-shirts, archaic shorts with too many pockets, and flip-flops, their tan faces unmarked. On the stone patio overlooking the steps, thin wooden statues loomed seven feet high, rope-like limbs leading up to a horizontal ovoid structure. At first Rada thought the figures were some kind of spirit tree, then she realized they were supposed to be Swimmers.

  Here and there, men and women touched candles to sheaves of rectangular greenish paper. Flames crackled over the faces of pale old men with fancy women's hairstyles.

  "The hell is that?" Webber said.

  Tiant's teeth flashed. "Money."

  "That's paper."

  "It's what the old ones worshipped. And it all became useless the moment the plague came."

  The smell of smoke drifted on the air. Candles and lanterns popped into being, illuminating hundreds of waiting faces.

  Tiant moved to the top of the stairs and spread his hands wide. "People! For generations, we have looked up and wondered where those who changed everything have gone to. Sometimes, we wondered if they were still out there at all. Tonight, I have brought you a woman who will put all our doubts and questions to rest—for she has seen the Swimmers."

  He stepped back, gesturing to Rada. She moved to the edge of the steps. They were incredibly steep. Looking down them, she felt an irresistible urge to sit before she fell.

  "I haven't seen the Swimmers in person," she said. "Or spoken to them. But they are watching us. For a chosen few, they speak, too."

  She relayed the news of FinnTech's deal with the Swimmers. How, for unknown reasons, the aliens had gifted them the technology for the Motion Arrestors. How some of that agreement had been captured on video. She made no mention of her involvement in uncovering this agreement, but otherwise provided as many details as she could.

  After the festival-esque mood below her, her story felt anticlimactic. Yet the faces below her were rapt. Stunned. When she finished, they burst into a hundred different conversations.

  Tiant stumbled up to her, the tears in his eyes threatening to streak his makeup. "Please, wait inside." He gestured to the temple. "I'll be with you soon."

  A woman showed them to a stone room with a low wooden table. The three of them sat. Webber jabbered about how weird the Xenoists were, but Rada was too focused on her next step to pay him any mind.

  Ten minutes later, a man in his late twenties walked into the room. He had dark eyes and a pronounced jaw.

  MacAdams smirked. "You clean up nice."

  "We're not savages," said the man. Rada, with a disorienting shift in understanding, realized he was Tiant out of his warpaint. "Rituals remind us why we believe."

  "Did you get your money's worth?" she said. "Excuse me, you don't use money—your barter's worth?"

  He grinned lopsidedly, but the expression quickly became sober. "I can't tell you what this means to us. Yet it raises so many questions. The Swimmers are back—why? Are they here to punish the rest of you again? To revert you to our authentic way of life?"

  Webber honked with laughter. "Do you really believe that's what happened? That the aliens were sent by some galactic will to put us in our place? How do you square that with the fact their tech made us look like cavemen?"

  "They came here. They all but destroyed us. Is it that hard to think we may have deserved it?"

  "When a cat eats a moth, I don't think it's trying to teach the moth a lesson."

  Tiant lounged beside the table. "You talk like you don't believe in higher powers."

  Webber held out his palms. "Do you believe in ghosts, too? I have this irrational habit of not believing in anything I can't see."

  "Why are you here?"

  "Because our boss doesn't want our species enslaved or exterminated. He's a humanitarian like that."

  "So you do serve a higher power," Tiant said. "The will of a man. I serve the will of existence. Which is more ridiculous?"

  Webber laughed some more, opening his mouth to rebut, but Rada cut him off. "We're trying to figure out the exact same thing—what the Swimmers are doing out there. Help us find our man, and I promise, we'll come back to tell you everything we've learned."

  "You've brought us a gift of unspeakable value. I'll do whatever I can."

  "Do you have a courthouse? A records hall?"

  Tiant burst into laughter. "Sure. It's right next to our generation ship."

  "You don't keep tabs on who lives here?" Rada said. "Then how do you collect taxes? Keep order?"<
br />
  "Unlike you, we keep ourselves on the knife's edge of survival. If we threaten that, if we hurt our neighbors, our neighbors will destroy us. As for the city as a whole, its divisions keep it in check."

  "Well, I know another way to skin this cat. But you won't like it."

  "I'll like anything that brings us closer to the truth."

  "I brought a device." She kept her eyes trained on his. "On it, I have names. Faces. Some of them will be your people. Can you get them to talk to me?"

  "After tonight?" He smiled. "They'll tell you every secret in their souls."

  "Unless they're the actual person we're looking for," Webber said. "That guy's dealt with the Swimmers. He doesn't think they're avenging angels. He's just here to hide."

  Rada brushed back her hair. The humidity was causing it to frizz. "I'll tell them I'm from the government. Doing a census."

  Tiant chuckled. "They despise government. That's what brings many people here."

  "Then how are we supposed to get the truth?"

  "I can only bring them to you. Divining the truth is up to you."

  She showed him the list Fell had provided them. To cement his resolve, and quell his objections to the unauthorized device, she showed him the video of the Swimmer, too. Tiant watched with a raptness she'd seen only in children.

  * * *

  In the morning, Rada had the displeasure of getting intimately acquainted with the outhouse. Breakfast was better—tortillas with potatoes, shredded chicken, and bell peppers—until she crunched into a grain of sand. She was beyond relieved when Tiant showed up with a list of names for her to run down. He assigned her a young girl named Sollie to act as guide.

  In the dirt streets, people came and went on foot and bikes. Small flocks of goats bayed to each other, driven by patient-looking men. Smoke rose from cook fires. The Xenoist enclave had a pastoral, timeless feel, but this sense was shattered every time a street vendor lit a propane grill, or an electric guitar jangled from the back porch of a shack.

  The first interviewee was a man named Peet. Peet turned out to be a potato farmer on a small plot of sloppy terraces. He wore sandals and denim overalls with the legs cut off at the knees. As they approached, he leaned on his hoe, sweating freely and looking like he still hadn't adjusted to Absolution's rustic way of life.

  "You're the woman from last night," he said, mouth hanging half open, though likely more from weariness than awe. "Something I can help you with?"

  The man smelled. Rada smiled anyway. "We're historians of a sort. Trying to get a read on what brings people here. Mind if I ask you a few questions?"

  "Not if I can answer in the shade."

  He relocated beneath a fragrant tree with leaves that were almost circular. There, Rada said, "What attracted you to Absolution?"

  "The deliberate pace of life, I suppose," Peet said.

  "You can farm potatoes anywhere. Why here?"

  "Because this is the only place where there isn't another option. There's no devices to distract you. You make it, or you starve."

  Webber rolled his eyes. "Or you go back home and sign up for government cheese. What really brought you down here?"

  Peet frowned, rippling the skin of his brow and cheeks. "There wasn't the one thing. My old life wasn't adding up. The only way to understand why was to come here, strip away the bullshit, and see what was left."

  Rada questioned him at length, sometimes circling back for more details on his motivations for migrating. Webber played bad cop, pressing for inconsistencies. MacAdams was content to look big and take notes. Once Rada felt there was nothing more to glean, she thanked Peet and headed back to the street, where Sollie was playing with some of the other children.

  Webber glanced back over his shoulder. "You know this is doomed, right? If Marcus DuPrima came here to flee FinnTech, there's no way he'll just tell us that."

  MacAdams folded his arms. "That wasn't DuPrima. Not unless he put on sixty pounds."

  "What, you never heard of lipojection?" Webber said.

  "How about the five-inch height difference?"

  "Leg extensions."

  "DuPrima's changed his appearance. We can bank on that. But I think we can rule out some candidates by looks, you know?"

  Webber stepped over a pile of feces, species indeterminate. "The point stands. Asking questions isn't going to get us anywhere."

  "Nobody's going to hand us the answer on a platter," Rada said. "We have to put in the work. Gather what's out there piece by piece. And see what shapes up."

  As the interviews went on, though, she gave Webber's objections more and more credit. The immigrants all fell into three discrete camps: those driven by loss (a breakup, a firing, the death of a sibling or spouse); those driven by disillusionment (modern life was a hollow sham); and those driven by insanity (those who thought worshipping human-destroying aliens was a dandy idea). Rada pried into their past occupations and interests, but none of them coughed up anything to indicate they were DuPrima in disguise.

  After exhausting the Xenoists, Tiant reached out to his contacts in the Pilgrim part of town. The buildings there were tidier, with straight, solid lines that looked built to last generations. Rada had expected everyone to be dressed in heavy wool with pewter belt buckles on everything, but the residents wore light, breezy button-up clothes. She supposed that on tropical beaches, everyone went casual eventually.

  It was a funny thing. These people, they shat into holes in the ground. Many had missing teeth, crooked fingers, and other signs of vintage health care. Some seemed to be running a contest between what they could make dirtier, their homes or themselves.

  Yet as rough as their self-imposed rusticism was, they seemed no less happy than the people Rada had known on Mars, the moons of Neptune, or the cities of Earth.

  "That's wonderful," Webber said after she'd voiced these thoughts out loud. "But let's reassess the value of our fast-paced, tech-driven society after we get out of this smelly hellhole. We're not finding anything here. I say we go see the Wrath."

  Rada had seen glimpses of the third sect's district. This was gated off by spiked fences. Men in black, rubbery armor reeled in and out of the trash-strewn gates, accompanied by occasional shouts and, sometimes, gunfire.

  It looked like a war zone. But several of those on Fell's list called it home.

  "You're right," Rada said. "Time to head to Bartertown."

  * * *

  Tiant laughed stutteringly. "Not a great idea. 'Bartertown' is a poor representation of what it really is. It should be called 'Beatingtown.'"

  "There's no other way around it," Rada said. "We have to talk to these people."

  "The people who live there will have zero interest in speaking to sociologists. But I know someone who can help you. She's a tom—a traveling storyteller. She can come and go as she pleases."

  He arranged a meet. The tom's name was Kerns, an older woman with gray braids, a short-sleeved plaid shirt, and a beautiful acoustic guitar. As she listened to Rada's request, she chewed a wad of green leaves.

  "Yeah," Kerns said. "No."

  Rada squeezed her jaw tight. "Tiant said you'd have no problem getting in."

  "I wouldn't. But you have a problem making it worth my while."

  "What, are you allergic to money?" Webber said.

  The old woman spat green juice. "Your money's nothing but electrons. Think I can spend those here?" She rubbed her sleeve over her forearm, lifting the hair there. "Look, I'm rich."

  "You're a tom," Rada said. "Telling stories is your livelihood. Well, I have one for you. It's about the alien who saved humanity."

  Kerns waved a wrinkled, heavily tanned hand. "I know the story of Sebastian. That's the story that made me want to do what I do."

  "This isn't about Sebastian. It's about a rebel who stopped his crew from nuking the handful of humans who survived the plague."

  Kern looked suspicious. Then a hot, hungry look washed over her face. "Tell me."

  The old woman
listened without interruption. After, she closed her eyes for three heartbeats, then produced a paper notepad and started scribbling notes. "Now tell me who you want to find."

  Rada showed her the faces of the nine recent immigrants she hadn't yet spoken to, then filled her in on the kinds of questions she was looking to have answered. She made it clear that she wasn't as interested in the answers as whether the speakers were telling the truth.

  "Don't you worry," Kerns grinned, green pulp lining her teeth. "I'm a professional liar. I'll spot your man."

  Rada walked off, MacAdams in tow. Webber lingered, speaking to the tom.

  Rada didn't see him until later that day. After a bit of idle chat, she said, "What'd you talk to Kerns about?"

  "The best places in town to get a drink," Webber said. "Figured I'd try to stir up some gossip. Even if I come out empty-handed, at least I'll be drunk."

  Rada felt a small twinge of jealousy, but it vanished as soon as she delved into her notes. The next couple days passed quietly. She revisited some of the interviewees, following up on the back stories they'd provided her. She didn't see any red flags. Tiant let her know that someone from something called the Hall of Purity had been by to speak to her, but that he'd run the guy off.

  If people were noticing them, coming around to question them, that meant they were running low on time. But short of collecting a DNA sample from all recent immigrants and comparing it to Toman's profile of DuPrima, Rada wasn't sure what else they could do.

  That evening, as Rada sat around the temple patio with Webber and MacAdams, Kerns strolled up, guitar slung over her back.

  "Good news." She winked at Webber. "It worked."

  Webber clapped. "Hell yes!"

  Rada's blood cooled. "Please tell me the 'it' in this discussion refers to the job I gave you."

  "You're looking for a man named Harl Nunez," Kerns said. "Showed up here seven months back. Xenoist, but a quiet one. As soon as he heard someone was after him, he took off like a bullet."

  "Where to?" Webber said.