Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

“Hssh.” Iri holds out a hand to quiet me and squints into the dark room. Her eyes go wide when she sees the biolume dead on the table. She looks at me in an appraising way.

I peer past her. She’s alone. No Modrie Reller or Hannah or any of the other women. My mind clicks over slowly, still thick with sleep and panic, as I try to piece together what it means.

“Ava.” Iri holds out her hand to me. “Come on.”

I stand locked in place. I know there’s something I ought to ask her, but my mouth hangs open, and no words come.

“Hurry on, girl.” A twitch of annoyance crosses Iri’s face. “It’s only an hour till newday.”

I peel myself away from the wall. Iri turns and sweeps out of the coldroom. I follow in a fog. The air of the bay clings heavy and beautifully warm on my skin. I half wonder if I’m still asleep and this is a dream.

Iri stops to seal the door to the coldroom behind us.

“What . . . ,” I whisper.

She cuts me off with a sharp motion of her hand. She presses her forefinger to her lips.

I follow her through the dark canyon of stacked cargo, out into the livestock bay. Only the steady pat of our bare feet on the floor and the rustle of our skirts disturb the silence. The goats look up as we pass, but they flap their ears and settle back into sleep on the hay. Even the chickens keep silent for once. Thank you, Mercies.

Iri pauses inside the outer bay door. She pulls a small square of fabric from the belt of her skirt and hands it to me. “Put this on,” she whispers.

I unfold the fabric. A worn green shirt, patched and rubbed thin in spots. She must have rescued it from the rag pile. I look up at her.

“You can’t go out of the ship like that.” She nods to my chest, then glances down to the torn hem of my skirt and the rags around my feet. “I would’ve brought shoes, but I couldn’t without Firstwife Reller noticing.”

I pull the shirt over my head and cinch its frayed laces so it fits me. “Why are you doing this?” I ask.

“There are some of us didn’t want a hand in what’s to be done with you, Ava.” Iri speaks low. “There are some what say, there but for the Mercies go I.” She reaches up and activates the bay doors.

This close, the shriek and rumble of the doors vibrates through my whole body. My heart throws itself against my chest.

“What are you thinking?” I shout to Iri over the deafening roar of the bay doors rolling open and the pneumatic thunk of the ramp descending to the station floor.

“It’s the only way out,” she shouts back.

I glance behind us. Any second, my brother or Modrie Reller or someone is bound to come. There isn’t any way no one heard the doors, even at this hour, and the Watches are sure to see the outer door’s been activated. Even now, silent alarms are flashing in the watchroom.

The ramp hits the floor with a rattling thud, and the pneumatics whine in relief.

“Come on.” Iri charges down the ramp, skirts swaying around her ankles with every long stride.

I rush after her, afraid to look back. We pass the gravity shift—I feel a sudden thump in my chest—and reach the latchdoor to the concourse. Iri unrolls a scrap of paper from her skirt pocket. She bends close to the pattern lock to compare the symbols she’s copied to the ones on the door’s lock grid.

Behind us, a single shout echoes from the open bay.

“Hurry, Iri.” I glance at the symbols on the grid. There are only ten of them, but they’re as foreign to me as they must be to Iri. She presses a halting finger to the first symbol in the sequence, a sharp one with two open tines on top.

More shouts.

Iri punches the second symbol, an easy one, a simple line.

The men come into view at the top of the ramp. The Watches, and among them, Jerej. He spots me. Something awful races across his face, and I know if he catches me, it won’t be the coldroom I go back to.

“Iri, please.”

She falters on the last symbol. Her finger hovers over the keypad. It’s a tricky one, a rounded symbol with a tail, and there’s another like it on the grid, only flipped. I pray to the Mercies and mash the final key for her.

The latchdoor releases. We run full tilt into the concourse. The vendors are rolling up the metal grates covering their storefronts to begin newday. I smell baking bread and the sharp twinge of ozone. The station’s Cleaners have swept the floor of all its late-night filth, and our bare feet slap the shining floor panels as we push through the gravity.

The latchdoor bangs open again at our backs. “Stop them!” Jerej shouts, but the vendors ignore him, and the few early morning passengers only turn their heads to stare after us in a daze. Jerej breaks into a run, the other men chasing behind. They don’t strain under the gravity as we do. With every step, they gain on us.

Iri and I dart around a corner, onto a broad, open causeway, longer across than the Parastrata and Æther put together, and domed in glass. The whole Void opens up above us. I gasp. Crowds of people shuffle across the causeway like bees on the face of a hive. Iri tugs my hand. We plunge into the thick of the crowd. I match her step and we lift our knees, run faster than any girls on any crewe have ever run. My lungs are tight and fighting now. My palm sweats in hers, but I grip her harder so we won’t slip apart.

At the far end of the causeway, a series of black-sheened doors leading to tiny, glowing-white rooms slide open and shut. As we close in, I see one door seal closed over a woman in a clinging black bodysuit with an orange robe draped over her shoulder, then open in a matter of heartbeats to reveal a man with skin as leached of color as his hair. I pull Iri’s hand, slowing us.

“It’s only an elevation shaft, Ava.” She says it soothing, like I would talk to the goats, and her tone unknots my snarl of panic enough to keep me running.

We race to the doors. I push myself faster, air coming hard. The nearest door must sense our weight on the floor tiles and begins to slide open. Iri and I turn our bodies sideways to fit through and careen into the tiny room. I spin. Jerej and the Watches shove through the crowd and bear down on us. The doors pause, sensing their weight.

I look up. There—a grid pad beside the sliding doors. It’s larger than the pattern lock on the latchport, its symbols a snarl of lines and curves all pressed against one another. And then above the grid, a panel with an orange-yellow line of light shining around its edges, some like the one inside the women’s quarters aboard the Æther. I slap my hand against it just as Jerej reaches us. He shouts, but the door slides closed, cutting off his cry. My stomach drops as we shoot up the shaft.

O ur first blind trip up the shaft takes us to the repairs tier, where carracks and frigates and barques lie with their innards spilled open, solar sails tattered and rent, hulls hefted up on lifts, while sparks rain down around them. We try again, and the shaft dumps us out in a long, narrow hallway somewhere in the depths of the station, lined with greasy windows. Barracks for the station’s crews, I guess, or those wanting a cheap bed between ship transfers.

We duck under lines of damp laundry strung across the corridor. A thickset girl with a metal barrel balanced on one shoulder nudges her way through the tangle. We press flat against a wall to let her pass. An older woman with lank hair and sores clustered around her mouth stares at us from one of the doorways, a grubby-faced baby toddling across the cramped room behind her. Farther on, another door swings open behind us. A pink-faced man with rotten teeth leans out.