An Unexpected Gift

by Grace Bridges -

Ave rested against the wall with the little ones piled on and around her. Their slumbering breaths formed a restful haze in the dimly-lit service corridor.

A vibration in the floor brought Ave to full wakefulness. She tensed, and the children around her shifted in their sleep. They knew the drill.

Ave listened a moment more, then burst into action with a shake that roused all the babes. Within seconds they sat upright, watching her for instructions.

“E-38. Go!” The tousled heads hustled away towards the prearranged meeting spot. Ave made sure they were all out of sight before she tucked herself into the tiny niche behind a support pylon.

The footsteps grew louder. She still had to concentrate extra hard to make them out; the visitor intended stealth. Ave’s heart hammered. She squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth. Then, like the turn of a page in an old book, peace washed over her with the silent song of a whale from the red planet far below.

She drew herself up to full height, breathed slow and deep, and opened her eyes just in time to spot a smallish shadow pass her hiding place. An orphan from one of the gangs? She was bigger. She could take him.

Ave darted out and grabbed the impostor from behind. Pinned at both elbows, he squealed and struggled. She dragged him back to the nearest light source, a small panel of blinking diodes. “What are you doing here?”

As she roughly turned him to face her, she realised he was hugging a bulging sack. Her eyes found his face. “Gavin!”

He relaxed in her grip. “Ave. Don’t hurt me. I brought food.”

“For us?” Ave boggled at the sack.

“I know you need it. The whales told me. I can get it.”

Ave gulped. “You’re not stealing from the wizard, are you?”

“No, silly. Spiner knows.” He laughed, then peered up and down the empty hall. “So where are your kids? Isn’t this your night zone?”

Ave looked away. “Not any more.”

Options

by Fred Warren -

The corridor light was dim, but still bright enough for reading. Whatever soulless computer or bureaucrat controlled the day/night cycle in Avenir’s lower levels would soon throttle it down to a barely perceptible glow. Smith turned a page in his tattered copy of Oliver Twist and squinted at the tiny print.

‘Hush!’ said the girl, stooping over him, and pointing to the door as she looked cautiously round. ‘You can’t help yourself. I have tried hard for you, but all to no purpose. You are hedged round and round. If ever you are to get loose from here, this is not the time.’

Struck by the energy of her manner, Oliver looked up in her face with great surprise. She seemed to speak the truth; her countenance was white and agitated; and she trembled with very earnestness.

‘I have saved you from being ill-used once, and I will again, and I do now,’ continued the girl aloud; ‘for those who would have fetched you, if I had not, would have been far more rough than me. I have promised for your being quiet and silent; if you are not, you will only do harm to yourself and me too, and perhaps be my death. See here! I have borne all this for you already, as true as God sees me show it.’

Kate settled in beside him and pulled up her shawl so it covered her head and shoulders. “We’ve never before sent them off alone.”

With a sigh, Smith closed the book and stuffed it into the folds of his coat. “If they can’t manage a job this simple, they’ve no business going out at all, with or without us.”

“It’s not the job that’s prickling the hairs on my neck. It’s the partnership.”

“All Wallace cares about is the money. We have a deal. We help him smuggle his parcels, and he lets us be.”

“How very warm and cozy.” Her smile was acidic. “’Tis a glorious day indeed, when we clasp hands with the likes of Wallace Beadle.”

He wouldn’t look directly at her. “You think I’m enjoying this? I had no choice.”

“There’s always a choice, Smith. You taught me that. Your speciality is finding the choices nobody else can see. Since when do you give up so easy, or toe the line on a contract with a piece of filth without conscience or scruples of his own?”

“This is different. Peacekeepers are involved. I can crack Wallace’s skull if gets too high and mighty, and I can lead a few fat Enforcers a merry chase, but I can’t dodge Peacekeepers. Their resources are unlimited, and they have license to kill.”

“Fine. You were backed into a corner, with no other options, so you ducked your head and tugged at your forelock, for the sake of the children.” Kate stood up and gazed into the depths of the long corridor where they’d skipped away on their dubious errand.

“Something like that.”

She whirled on him. “And what of Wallace’s options?”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Put yourself in the wretch’s shoes for a moment. What’s your best option...your most profitable option? Surely not to honor the terms of your arrangement.”

Smith shrugged. “He’d gain nothing from betraying us. Orphans are a flea on the government’s backside. Plucking them from the corridors and taking them into custody costs more than ignoring them, no matter how much pocket change they nick.”

“It all depends on what you do with them afterwards, doesn’t it?”

Now he lifted his head and stared at her. “Do with them? You mean mad labs? Doll factories?”

“We’ve all heard the stories. It explains the missing.”

“There are better explanations for the missing than fairy tales spun to keep fractious children in line. If there truly was a black market in flesh, the Peacekeepers couldn’t let themselves be linked to it, and even Wallace wouldn’t sell children.”

“Wouldn’t he? I expect a dozen new Frankies would fetch a pretty penny. He was always joking about it, remember? ‘Rich folk want their pets obedient and housebroken,’ he’d say. Wallace gets a tidy bonus, and he cuts out your heart in the bargain.”

The words of Nancy, Oliver’s guardian angel, echoed in Smith’s head: I have saved you from being ill-used once, and I will again, and I do now.

He groaned. “I hate it when you’re right.”

Kate knelt beside him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “I’m not asking you to go back on your word, love, nor to put the wee ones at risk. Just take a quick look, to be sure. Make well and certain the slimy latchmaggot is keeping his promises.”

“What if we’re seen?”

“Ah, Smith. Seen? Have you sunk so low?”

Doll

by Fred Warren

“There’s another one!”

“I’ve got her, Cecile. You take the old gent with the suspenders.”

Charlie threaded his way through the crowded market, his eyes fixed on the spider brooch that identified his next mark, a tall woman in a green dress and broad-brimmed hat. Her white-bleached hair cascaded across her shoulders in a network of complicated braids threaded with colorful beads.

Two more packages to go. His worry over the parcels he’d squashed in the corridor was a faint memory now. This was so easy it was almost fun. No fear of getting caught stealing when he was giving items to the marks, no need to continually check the exits, and no nagging from Smith afterwards about his technique.

He felt more grown-up without Smith and Kate watching him like a pair of sentry beetles. They still treated him like a baby, and he was one of the oldest. It wasn’t fair. Maybe I’ll get a little more respect now, he thought, as he drew up behind the woman and slipped the chilly package into her shopping bag with a grin. By the time she noticed the extra weight, he’d be off to the next mark.

As he turned to dart away, something tugged at the corner of his vision, and he paused for an instant to look. The woman in the hat wasn’t alone. Her other hand was clasped by a girl about Charlie’s age, dressed in a frilly green frock that matched the woman’s in miniature. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite…

The memory came into focus. “Sophie? Sophie Wander?”  She was from one of the other orphan gangs, and they’d bumped shoulders more than once in the marketplace. Charlie’s excitement overcame his caution. “I can’t believe it…you’re an Oliver!” Smith was always talking about the lucky few that caught the fancy of a rich family and got themselves adopted, like in the story, but to actually meet one, and somebody he knew—it was like a window into heaven.

The girl stared back at him without a glimmer of recognition, or emotion.

“Sophie? It’s me, Charlie Lone! We were nicking pretties together in this very spot not long ago, remember?”

No twitch of a smile, no widening of her eyes. It was as if she was looking right through him. Then, he noticed the faint line of stitch-scarring at her hairline, and the barely-perceptible spiderweb of slender wires beneath the skin of her neck and on the backs of her arms and hands. He was suddenly cold all over.

She’s a Frankie doll.

Another story come to life. The orphans told this one to each other in whispers as they shivered beneath their shredded blankets at night. This is what happens if you’re not careful, if you don’t follow the rules, if you’re bad. This is what they’ll make you.

The tall woman noticed him now, and her mouth twisted in disgust. “You’ve run your errand, little guttersnipe. Get out of my sight.” She tugged on Sophie’s arm. “Charlotte, dear, come along. Pay him no mind.”

“Yes, mummy.” Her voice was as lifeless as her eyes.

He stumbled away in the opposite direction, trying to make sense of what he’d just seen. He delivered his final package in a daze, not even trying to make the delivery smooth and silent. The mark shoved him away with a curse, and Charlie staggered toward the nearest exit, pushing back against an overwhelming urge to run, run, run to someplace dark and silent and safe where he could hide.

A pair of rough hands seized his shoulders and flung him into the iron grasp of a burly man wearing an Enforcer’s uniform. A damp cloth muffled his screams and metal buttons pressed painfully into Charlie’s face as he struggled in vain to free himself. The pungent, syrupy odor of whatever was soaking the cloth drained his strength, and his legs sagged beneath him. His ears began to buzz, but he could still hear voices, harsh and gravelly, from far, far away.

“This is the last one?”

“Yessir. Delivery of all packages, plus ten expendables for the lab or dollworks, as appropriate. I’ll take my payment now, if you please.”

“You’ll be paid once delivery is confirmed by the clients and the expendables are re-purposed. Not before.”

“That wasn’t the deal I made with…”

“Shut up! Don’t speak his name here. It’s the deal you’re getting. Be grateful you have your freedom. He doesn’t like loose ends.”

“If I’m not paid, boyo, he’ll have a lot more than loose ends to worry about.”

There was more, but the buzzing was so loud now, Charlie couldn’t make out the words.

Sorry, Smith.

Wasn’t careful.

Rules.

Too late.

Bad.

Doll.

Echoes of Evil

by H. A. Titus

As the Anchor's clock turned to the hour, Cara spotted Clock and Cog trotting into the docking area. She grinned. School had been going for three weeks, and the siblings had never failed to turn up within five minutes of eight o'clock every morning.

"Pieter!" she yelled down into the cargo hold. "They're here."

"Up in a minute," he called back.

Cara swung out the hatch and onto the dock. As the two other orphans got closer, Cog hung back and motioned for his sister to go on ahead. Clock darted into the Anchor as fast as she could—she was always looking for time to study the ship and daydream about flying it one day.

Cog paused beside her, and for a second, his eyes looked like Pieter's had for the last few weeks. Bruised and tired. "Have you heard about anything weird going on?"

"Weird?" Cara shook her head. She'd been so wrapped up with the Anchor ever since Peter's trial that she hadn't really paid much attention to any of the news on the street. "Nothing except your out-of-the-blue question."

Cog's lips quirked into a half-smile. "You remember Nosey and Bruzzy?"

Cara nodded. Everyone on the lower levels had known them. Bruzzy never spoke a word, but he was always with Nosey, a girl who liked to listen to gossip and was terrified of big, open places. They had been nice, until Nosey had started freaking out more and more often. "They went to the crazy house, right?"

"Saint Christina's Clinic for the Neuro-Atypical," Cog said. "Yeah. Well, a couple of kids I know went up there the other night, to see if they could sneak in and see Nosey and Bruzzy, right? And when they got close, they could hear the patients all babbling and chanting something."

"So? They're crazy people. They're gonna babble, right?"

"Except they were all chanting the same thing. 'The planet began to crack. The ground shattered with a furious thunder! Steam hissed into the icy blackness in a vast dying breath.'"

Cara frowned. "Why would they be saying that?"

"I don't know. But the kids said it was really freaky. Just the way they looked when they were talking about it gave me the shivers." Cog fidgeted with his welding goggles again. "They weren't lying, either."

"How do you know?"

"Same way I knew you weren't when you told everyone you were learning to fly. Who'd make something like that up?"

"You two gonna stand out there and yap all day?" Clock yelled from the hatch.

"Coming!" Cog rolled his eyes.

"Well—" Cara chewed her lip. "Do you think we need to tell someone?"

"I don't know," Cog said, turning toward the ship. "I just though you should know something weird happened. Y'know, to make sure you keep your eyes open. Don't need anything to happen to any of us."

"Yeah." Cara followed him into the Anchor, looking over her shoulder. The shadows in the docking bay seemed just a little darker and creepier. I hope that's just my imagination.

Contraband

by Fred Warren

“Y’say we’re supposed to light-finger these onto the marks?”  Charlie Lone favored Smith with the incredulous glare of a child who might have just been told that gravity makes things fall upward. The other orphans in Smith’s gaggle remained silent, but they looked on with keen curiosity. Un-picking pockets was a novel concept, indeed.

“That’s right. Think of it as lifting in reverse. Each mark will be wearing a golden pin or brooch shaped like a spider. Slip the parcels into their shopping bags, one per customer, but take care you’re not seen doing it, the same as you would when conducting business the usual way.”

“Why should anybody care that we’re giving them something they want?”

“Some people might be upset there aren’t enough for everyone.”

“It still sounds screwy to me. What are we getting out of this?”

“Enough credits to keep your stomach full for a good long time, Charlie m’boy, and the Enforcers off our backs. Just do as I’ve told you, and all will be well.”

Charlie frowned, then lifted one of the palm-sized cubes to his ear and gave it a shake.

“Stop that!”

“It doesn’t feel like there’s anything inside. What is it?”

“None of your business. It’s…delicate. If you break it, we won’t get paid.” Smith took the parcel and stuffed it into the stained cloth satchel slung over the boy’s shoulder. “Right. Take the long way back once you’ve delivered all your parcels. If you’ve not found all the marks in an hour, drop whatever’s left at the fishmonger’s stall. Everybody clear?”

“Yes, Smith,” they chorused.

“Brilliant. Off to the marketplace with you, ones and twos, and keep a cheery look about you. Kate’ll have something special waiting when you return.”

Kate nodded. “Something sweet.”

They all paused for a moment, mouths agape, then scrambled away down the corridor en masse, pushing, shoving, and chattering gleefully.

“Ones and twos!” Smith called halfheartedly after them. “And have a care with those parcels!” He looked over at Kate and shrugged. “What’s the use?”

“She tugged her tattered coat tighter around her body. “I don’t like this. We should be going with them.”

“Wallace didn’t leave me any choice.”

“We all could have bolted. Found another hiding place.”

“He knows the nether corridors as well as I do. He’d be onto us before we settled the first wee one in her cradle. And he’s got a Peacekeeper backing him up now. You know what will happen to the children if we’re taken. We have to do things his way, for now.”

“No good can come of working with Wallace Beadle. What’s in those boxes, anyhow?” Her eyes narrowed. “Snowdrift? Lightshow?”

“Wallace wouldn’t say. I don’t think it’s drugs. They’re cold to the touch and far too light to be packed with anything heavier than aerogel.  I’m thinking it’s egg sacs or dormant larvae. Exotic treats for the upper decks, as if they haven’t enough to eat already.”

“Smuggling is smuggling. If the children are caught, there’s no hope of even the orphanage. They’d be better off dead.”

“They won’t be caught, I promise. Like Charlie said, even if someone notices, they won’t care about our lot giving rather than taking, and the marks want these parcels badly. This’ll be the easiest run we’ve ever had.”

Smith stared into the dark corridor that had already swallowed the children. The easiest run ever. He almost believed it himself.

#

A leg shot out and hooked Charlie’s foot, sending him sprawling. He pushed himself upright and dusted off his hands and knees, wincing at a scraped palm but heedless of one more rip in his trousers among a dozen others. He reached into his satchel to ensure all six of his assigned parcels were still there. One, two, three, four…uh, oh. Two were leaking something cold and sticky. He pulled them out and tried to smooth the crumpled cubes into shape, but there was no way to hide the tears or the ooze staining their brown paper wrapping. The marks would be angry to find them this way.

He looked up and down the corridor. He was alone. He pushed the damaged parcels beneath a bag of rubbish leaning against the corridor wall and sprinted after his fellows.