Melissa la Cruz - Frozen

But what if Wes—and everyone else—was right? What if there was no such thing as the Blue? She waited to hear the voice in her head protest—but there was nothing. Maybe because it knew it was too late for her to turn back now. They weren’t very far from the coast, and with enough gas, they could probably get to the pier tonight. She fingered the stone around her neck, thinking it wouldn’t be long now.

Shakes led them into a dark building, down the stairs, into a bustling turo-turo restaurant in the basement. At a turo-turo (Nat knew it meant “point point” in a forgotten language), all a customer had to do was point at the food they wanted to eat since hardly anyone could read a menu. There was a big lunch counter with steam tables featuring an array of dishes of varying ethnic origins. But unlike the corporate mash-ups, the food was singular and unlike anything she had encountered before.

There was a vat of fish ball soup, a doughy concoction that didn’t look like fish at all, but tasted delicious; charred meat skewers—pork from the smugglers who worked in the heated enclosures—almost impossible to find and incredibly expensive in New Vegas, but available here; fragrant rice dishes stuffed with real vegetables; and slippery noodles filled with slivers of real garlic and ginger, steaming and tempting.

“Does it all come from the runners?” she asked, as they pointed to their choices and accepted heaping plates of rice, noodles, and meat.

“Most of it.” Wes nodded. “But some are military rations that the cronies unload here, trading food stock for weapons.”

“Military rations! But that would mean—”

“K-Town wouldn’t exist without the military’s permission,” Wes said. “They need to keep an eye out in Garbage Country and have a place where they can conduct business with slavers without anyone knowing.”

“So the food shortages aren’t real either,” she said. The lack of resources was the reason every citizen was given a Fo-Pro card. Unless you were rich and could eat from the tiny but luxurious private sector, every aspect of the food supply was rationed, given out piecemeal.

“Who knows, but there’s food here,” Wes said.

“While we starve on slop.” Shakes shook his head.

“Five centavos,” said the cashier behind the counter.

Nat was surprised to find the girl had bright burgundy eyes, and the girl stared back at her with a languid, almost bored expression.

Wes paid for their lunch with a real silver coin. “They don’t take watts here—only the old currency from Before.”

But Nat was still staring at the girl. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that the marked girl was moving about so freely, without anyone noticing or caring.

“A lot of marked refugees get stuck in K-Town,” said Wes, bumping her elbow to move her along. “They save enough watts to get past the border, but have nothing left to go anywhere else. So they work, hoping to earn enough to pay for transport out of here. But most of them never do.”

“And no one cares?” she said, looking at a few military personnel scattered around the place.

“Not here at least.”

They settled down to eat their meal. Nat marveled at the texture—she’d never had vegetables like this before, never had meat that hadn’t been processed or wasn’t just tofu made to taste like meat. It was a revelation. Still—just as in New Vegas—everyone drank Nutri. Clean water was rare, even in K-Town.

Wes took a swig from his cup and motioned to a bearded man seated at the next table. “Howie, you know if Rat still runs the table? Is that game still going on? Slob happen to be around? Or any other of Jolly’s boys?” he asked, wiping his lips with a napkin.

“Should be. Doesn’t change. You in?”

Nat pushed away her plate. She felt ill after eating such a huge meal. “There’s a casino?” she asked, feeling a gambler’s excitement at the prospect.

“Better yet—there’s a high-stakes poker match,” Wes replied.

She raised her eyebrows. Things were starting to get interesting. “What’ve you got in mind?” she asked.

“For one thing, I need to get my ship back.”

She stared at him. Did he just say what she thought he’d said? “What do you mean, get your ship back ? You don’t have a ship? How are we going to get across the ocean?”

“Relax, relax—I have a ship—just not right now. But that can be rectified.” He shrugged.

She goggled at him and turned to Shakes. “Did you know he doesn’t have a ship? And you guys took this job anyway?”

To his credit, Shakes managed to look sheepish.

“I thought you didn’t gamble,” she accused Wes.

He shot her a Cheshire cat smile. “What can I say? Easy come, easy go.”

Shakes guffawed. “How? Once the Slob sees you, he’ll leave the table. He knows you’ll be after it. He’s not going to risk having to give it back after you won it from him in the first place.”

“I’m not going to win it,” Wes said, pointing at Nat. “She is.”

THE PLACE WASN’T A CASINO EXACTLY. It was just another crowded subterranean basement room with a few roulette tables, card tables, a craps table, and a bar. Nat found the noise and the smell of sweat and smoke overwhelming as she walked into the room, a little unsteady on her high heels. She was dressed as a tai tai, a rich Xian trophy wife, slumming in K-Town on her way to Macau.

With the help of a video blog and a few silver coins from Wes’s stash, she’d managed to find an appropriate costume. She was wearing a tight red cheongsam, her long dark hair was held back in a bun with two sparkling chopsticks, and the blue stone remained looped on a chain around her neck, masquerading as a decorative bauble. Farouk had outfitted the dress with a fake fusion battery, which blinked red at her collar. She’d protested she would freeze before she got inside the door, but Wes had been adamant. The tai tais did not wear bulky layers of any kind; they slithered around the city flashing their bare legs as a sign of wealth and ease.

“You look good,” Wes had allowed before she left the shelter. “You think you can do this?”

“Watch me,” she’d told him. Even if she was nervous, it was too late to back out now, and he knew it, too. Besides, of all the things she could do in the world, she could play poker.

The Slaine brothers, dressed in chauffeur uniforms, would act as her bodyguards. If anything happened, they would make sure to get her out of there alive. She didn’t know if she trusted Zedric and Daran with her life, but, once again, she didn’t have a choice. Without a ship, she might as well go home.

“VIP room?” she asked the bouncer guarding a door near the bar.

“Fingerprint,” he grunted, pointing to a reader. “And no muscle inside,” he said, shaking his head at her companions. He held up a flashlight to check her pupils.

Wes had warned her there was a chance she would have to run the play alone, but if she had entered the hall without any protection, no one would believe she was who she pretended to be.

Daran winked and whispered, “Don’t worry, I’ll be close by.”

She dismissed them with a wave of her manicured fingers and smiled at the bouncer as she put her designer sunglasses back on her nose. She pressed her hand against the print reader. Farouk had entered her photo and fake background into the system. She was Lila Casey-Liu, the sixteen-year-old wife of a molecular phone magnate.

Nat would have to do much more than convince a bouncer; she’d have to deceive the Slob, one of the most feared slavers in the Pacific. His real name was Slavomir Hubik, but everyone called him Slav, or the Slav, or SLB, his handle in textlish, which had turned into Slob. The Slob was far from one. He was a trim nineteen-year-old pirate from somewhere in New Thrace, the most notorious of the outlaw territories. He was one of the top men in a fearsome scavenger armada that trolled the black waters, supplying garment slaves to Xian factories, drugs to New Vegas, and pleasure girls and boys to anyone who would pay the bride price. There were even rumors that the slavers weren’t just trading animal meat either; to desperate buyers, they were willing to sell the human cargo that wouldn’t sell otherwise.