Vicki Pettersson - Cheat the Grave

“Every rogue carries a sort of talisman from wherever it is they’ve escaped. That’s Melania’s. She…she wasn’t here very long.”

I frowned at the tightness in Io’s voice, but she’d moved on. “This is Cedric’s. He fled the valley last year. And you know who this one belongs to. See the flag?”

A patch from an item of clothing, the colors dropped vertically in green, white, and red. An eagle devouring a snake atop a prickly pear cactus. “Carlos.”

I felt rather than saw her nod. “Most agents don’t even know they’re carrying around pieces of the lives they’ve fled. It’s an unconscious impulse, a way of staying connected to the home and family they’ve always known. But when they truly become a member of the cell, they’re able to give up the old.”

She looked sharply at me here and I looked sharply back. I had no such object to release. I was still home.

“Don’t worry,” she finally said. “Carlos doesn’t force the issue and there’s no ceremony to mark the occasion. When the time is right, each rogue simply picks out a spot on the wall that feels right and claims it as their own.”

I gazed along the length of rough hallway, gaze catching on dozens of talismans. “How many rogues are here?”

Io shrugged. “The cell shifts as people come and go, though each member changes the makeup of the whole. Even when they’re gone, they leave a bit of themselves behind.”

“Are there really that many displaced agents in the world?” Warren had made it seem there were only a few…and those were alone, broken, dangerous, or crazy.

“As long as there’ve been societies, there’ve been people on the fringe of them.” Io motioned me forward and we entered an anteroom that dipped dangerously in the middle, blown out rubble still trapped in the bottom of the bowl. A wire net crisscrossed the opening, ostensibly to keep people from falling through, but I shuddered, thinking it could just as easily be someone, or something’s, cage.

“A sink within the sink.” Io jerked her chin at the hole. Her tone was dismissive, so I relaxed enough to turn my attention to what was by default the most interesting part of the room.

“More talismans?” I asked, though the objects in here weren’t embedded in the walls, just piled along them. The wall candles were planted haphazardly by necessity, and the shadows they cast caught the strange objects in bumpy relief. It was light enough to see that everything was burned, twisted, melted, or savagely mutilated, and would have been unrecognizable if they hadn’t been so patently mundane.

There were car doors, ripped from their hinges, with shattered windows and bubbled, peeling paint. A scorched tabletop missing all of its legs. Steel girders so gnarled they couldn’t support their own weight. Giant slabs of concrete, plaster, an airplane propeller, front doors, and a mishmash of smaller debris caught in jars like fireflies made of rubble. The place was packed, floor to ceiling, with the scorched remains of every material known to man.

“It looks like Ali Baba’s junkyard.”

Io snorted. “Welcome to Doom Town. And Survival City…at least what remains of them.” She shot me a wry smile as she reached atop a teetering pile of scrap metal and punched blackened keys on an old fashioned cash register. “Atomic cities. Fictional, except that they were real, down to the smallest detail. They used to piggyback on the nuclear tests, building homes, military operations, shelters…all in varying distances from ground zero. Then, boom!” She made an explosion with her strong hands.

“They built entire cities just to blow them up?” I asked, running my hand along what looked like the front of a train.

“Survivability testing.”

Looking for the rest of the engine, I peered around the train’s nose before jerking back, letting out an involuntary squeak. A charred face stared back at me, the skin bubbled and blackened on one side. A single blue eye locked on my face, and Io chuckled behind me.

“I see you’ve met Marge. She was reading the paper and listening to the radio at the time of attack. The scientists wanted to see what a thermal pulse would do to a human being, depending on where the bomb was dropped.”

“So they used mannequins?”

She picked up her pace as she crossed the room, no novelty to her. “And pigs.”

I shuddered, thankful I’d run into Marge instead of the pig. “But why is all of this here?”

“Shits and giggles, mostly,” she said, placing her hand on a perfect iron door. “It was Roland’s idea to start the collection-he’s inside-but we all joined in. Let’s just say it can get monotonous on Yucca flat.”

And with that she yanked the iron door open. Carlos’s voice reached out to wrap around me even before I saw inside. “She did it?”

Io nodded once.

“Fantastic!” Carlos clapped his hands once, then held out his arms as I ducked through the doorway.

“Welcome.”

I said nothing, noting eight other pairs of eyes studying me. Tripp, hunched in an outcropping of the circular room was one of them. Fletcher and Milo sat together at a wider sandy bench, also outfitted with dark hemp pillows. The room was as sparse as the other had been cluttered. Yet five other men sat in similar alcoves. Some of the seating areas looked like they’d been blown away, while others like they’d been dug out with a spoon. All appeared positioned around an invisible round table. I met each gaze boldly, memorizing faces, trying to intuit thought, but it was useless. The men were naturals at hiding their emotions-both the physical expression and the accompanying scent. I wouldn’t be able to scent them anyway, but if I were a betting woman, I’d pin them all as Shadows.

Former Shadows, I corrected, with some effort. Grays.

Tables made of barrels and flat-topped sawhorses sat to the side of each alcove, topped off by actual china settings, mismatched but shining. I’d clearly interrupted dinner, and my stomach growled, recognizing carne, tortillas, beans and rice.

“Come. Your meal is waiting,” Carlos gestured, indicating one of the empty alcoves. “As is your place in our circle.”

The other men remained silent as I eyed the seating more closely. The benches weren’t just smoothed out, but sported glyphs and symbols as mysterious and meaningful as those I’d seen in Midheaven and on the chest at Caine’s shack. And someplace else, I thought, furrowing my brow. Why couldn’t I remember where?

“This drugged as well?” I asked sarcastically, pointing at the food as I sat.

Carlos shrugged, unapologetic. “I took the opportunity to see if you could return to Midheaven via your dreams…even without your powers. This proved you can.”

“Is that why you said gnawing on your little night crawler would open my eyes to ‘that which was previously hidden’?” I lowered my voice an octave, and put on an accent as I picked up a tortilla. Warm, fresh…delicious. Okay, so they lived somewhat better than moles, I thought, settling back, surprised to find the natural dirt alcove comfortable.

“Sí, mon . I needed you to stay under long enough to determine you were still a part of that world. And you are. Entwined in its fabric, you have changed it as much as the knowledge of it has changed you. What do you expect when you gave up a portion of your soul to get there?”

Two-thirds, to be exact, I thought, chewing. Not that the remaining third was a worry. I was never going near the real entrance again. Especially after that dream. “And why would you want to see that?”

Why had he given me a tracking device that reacted to body heat and adrenaline? Why return prints to my fingertips? Why coat my organs with an armor that made them impervious to all but the most magical of weapons? What exactly, I now wondered, did Carlos want out of all this?