Chapter 82: Going Out

  “Going out, Ellie?”

  Ellie paused in the doorway and glanced back at Avalon. They hadn't talked about his 'retirement.' Or about the Marchesses' offer, or about what it all meant.

  Avalon didn't seem to want to think about it –

  And Ellie had been busy.

  She nodded. “I have to meet some people.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “Does that surprise you so much?”

  “Honestly?” He gave her a tired smile. “Yes. In my experience, not many people on Etemenos wish to meet with hybrids.”

  Or follow them into battle, Ellie thought.

  She said, “There are decent people out there, Marcel, more than you might think. And other hybrids, too.”

  “Of course.” Avalon nodded, then leaned back on his reactive gel couch and closed his eyes. “I know your business is not mine to ask after. But Ellie?”

  “Yes?”

  “There are decent people in the world-city, to be sure – but there are dangerous people, too. Have a care you know which ones you're meeting.”

  Ellie's ear twitched nervously. She gave it an idle scratch.

  Did Avalon know where she was going? Who she planned to meet with? At the very least he had reason to suspect.

  Did it matter if he knew?

  No.

  Ellie had to make the meeting she'd set. It had taken her weeks and a tidy chunk of the back pay Otto Algreil had slipped into Jack's accounts just to set it up. Jack's sentencing was fast approaching. Principle alone knew how many more layers she'd have to bribe or bluff her way through before she had even a chance of warning Chloe.

  “I'll be careful,” she said, and slipped out to the tube-streets and broad plazas of Etemenos's third ring.

  Ellie's flight suit rose over her head so she could check the information she'd acquired on her last trip from Avalon's home. It wasn't much: an address on the fifth ring. Fortunately, her suit could connect to Etemenos's navigational assistance service to guide her through the world-city. It reminded her of a pedestrian version of the flight path indicator on the Mother Goose.

  Ellie thought of her and Jack and Chloe's ship as she slid through the crowds and along the people-movers. She was glad for the flight suit. It saved her the embarrassment of showing the world she could tear up over a machine.

  Not that anyone would bother to look at her, much less wonder after her troubles.

  Until then, Ellie had never truly come to grips with how much her life would, inevitably, change. Even if Avalon's plan to free Jack and hers to warn Chloe succeeded, even if her family was reunited – even if they could get the Mother Goose and its mecha back. Ellie knew the experience would change her family, and she couldn't begin to speculate on how. Chloe had been forced to grow up in the worst way. Jack's faith in his government had been shattered.

  Ellie knew, if only second-hand, her son.

  Her flight suit hid her bittersweet smile, too.

  Perhaps, she thought, things would change for the better. The Federal Senate had not deserved Jack's trust. Chloe would grow up better and stronger than ever.

  All they had to do was reunite.

  All she had to do was make a secret meeting with some of the most ruthless men on Etemenos and persuade them to put her in touch with the shadowy boss they'd probably never seen or heard referred to by name, trading on the strength of knowledge of that boss that was second-hand at best and mostly over a decade old.

  So much for being careful.

  Ellie hadn't exactly acclimated to Etemenos, but the initial, breathtaking awe was gone. As she boarded one of the public shuttles between rings, she didn't even try for a window seat. She sat in the shadows toward the back, grateful for the privacy that hid her from most of the curious, occasionally disapproving glances.

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  She had to transfer three times to reach her destination on the fifth ring. Even then, if it hadn't been for the high-speed people-movers that were Etemenos's streets, she'd have been walking for days, perhaps weeks. Instead, the trip from Avalon's estate to the unassuming structure she was told housed the Kronistine Syndicate's base of power on the world-city took her only a little more than three hours.

  Ellie stepped up to the facade of the Kronistine building and hesitated.

  It was a plain, white structure set into the fifth ring's outer surface. None of its walls were broken up by windows or decorations. No signs or other markings proclaimed its function or even a false front. It could have been abandoned.

  It wasn't, Ellie knew.

  If she went inside, she would find it full of ruthless men who would kill her as soon as look at her and were more than capable of pulling it off.

  Not if she went inside.

  When.

  Ellie stepped up to the door and knocked.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then the door slid open to reveal a man in a dark groundling suit. He made no attempt to conceal the pistol holstered at his left breast.

  He looked her up and down and rumbled, “What do you want?”

  “I'm here to discuss business important to your bosses,” Ellie said. For a wonder, her voice didn't waver. Much.

  The enforcer chuckled. “Really.”

  “Yes, really. I was referred here from Lightspeed Joe's Easy Marks.”

  “Then Lightspeed Joe's got a problem, too,” the enforcer said.

  “My master,” Ellie said, somehow managing to not choke on the words, “wants to talk to yours. I'm supposed to make the connection.”

  “Huh.” This seemed to pacify the enforcer. His eyes flickered behind dark glasses. Ellie realized he was getting instructions. He said, “In.”

  So far, so good. Assuming they didn't just want to kill her someplace more private.

  The enforcer stepped to the side, allowing Ellie to squeeze past him. It put her somewhat at ease. He'd given her a chance to grab his gun, if she was trained for it. Maybe it meant the Kronistine men believed she didn't mean them harm.

  Maybe it meant he didn't know hybrids could be trained to use guns.

  Ellie wished she could rein in her speculation. It always seemed to get away from her.

  Two more men in what seemed to be practically a uniform waited in the darkened room within. One of them waved to her. “Follow us.”

  Ellie followed.

  They led her through a series of hallways and into another room. A screen lit this one, displaying a tranquil mountain scene from some planet Ellie had never visited. It was the only light. Two reactive gel chairs sat against the wall opposite the screen.

  One of the Kronistine men pulled the chairs over, then stepped back.

  “Sit,” the one who'd told her to follow him said.

  Ellie sat.

  When she saw him go for his gun, she tried to hurl herself backwards.

  Her chair's cushioned arms turned to shackles before she could do more than twitch.

  Ellie found herself staring at the long barrel of a needle pistol. If the Kronistine man pulled the trigger, a shard of metal with a monomolecular tip would shoot through her eye and into her brain with no more sound than a puff of air. In the seconds it would take her to register she was dead, two dozen more tiny flanges would join the first.

  “Wait,” she gasped. “Please, this is –”

  “If we were going to kill you out of hand,” the Kronistine man said, “you'd have been dead already.”

  Ellie wasn't sure if she should feel relieved or not.

  There were worse things than death. She suspected these men knew a lot more than she did.

  “Since when,” the Kronistine man said, “does Federal Intelligence use hybrid agents?”

  “Fed Intelligence?” It startled a laugh from Ellie's throat. “Why would I work with those bastards? After what they've done to my people? You must be joking.”

  “Heh,” he said mirthlessly.

  Ellie's laugh died.

  “I like the righteous indignation. It's very convincing. Mrs... Hughes, right?” Even his unpleasant smile faded. “I guess Fed Intelligence started using hybrids when it started getting their so-called husbands under its thumb.”

  “I'm not with the Feds!”

  “A rival syndicate, then? You can't expect me to believe you were poking your nose into our business just for the fun of it.”

  “Like I told your doorman,” Ellie said, “I need to speak to your boss. Your big boss. Mr. Kronid.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” the Kronistine man said. “There is no such person.”

  “Of course there is,” Ellie said. “I've met him.” Or at least, she thought but manifestly did not say, I've seen him firsthand. “Stephan Kronid, aka Stephan Kyrillos, whose mechaneer name is the Black Rook.”

  “She knows,” the so-far silent Kronistine man said.

  “Proving that she's Fed Intelligence,” the talkative one said. His pistol hadn't even wavered.

  Ellie stared at the barrel. She was rapidly running out of cards to play, and the gun pointed at her head didn't make it easy to concentrate. She'd thought Stephan's name would persuade them to at least listen to what she had to say.

  She wanted to say she wasn't afraid of dying. That she was only afraid of not warning Chloe.

  She couldn't lie that well.

  She was pretty well terrified.

  “Please,” she whispered, “I have to speak with him. He'd want to talk to me. He knows me! What's the harm? If Fed Intelligence does know who Stephan is, then Principle, what damage can I do by talking to him even if I were with them?”

  “You could waste his time,” the Kronistine man said. “Bad enough you've wasted mine.”

  He adjusted his aim.

  Ellie refused to give the bastard the satisfaction of squeezing her eyes shut.

  Then the door behind them flew open and a slender girl flew through in a cloud of dark curls, crying, “Wait!”