Scions of Sacrifice Read online

  Meow Meow helped Cruze out of his jacket. He mumbled something and snatched for it. She danced back, flashing her eyelashes. Holding the jacket away from him, she shoved his chest and he fell back onto the bed.

  Dante took the jacket and dug through it. He transferred chips to his pants pockets and tossed the jacket back to Meow Meow. She threw it on the floor, then leapt onto the bed, straddling the drunk man.

  He raised his hands toward her.

  Meow Meow’s right hand blurred as she struck him in the head. He went limp, arms falling over his belly, lips parting in slack unconsciousness. A bloody gash oozed crimson drips from his temple to his unshaven cheek.

  The scrawny girl climbed off him and tossed something onto the bed. A heavy crystal ashtray, faceted and sparkling.

  “Get him out of here, darling,” Meow Meow ordered Dante.

  He clicked his tongue and flashed a put-upon look at Jacey. “You just had to pick a 95 kilo guy, didn’t you?”

  Jacey shrugged. “Thin men like you don’t seem to ever have any chips. What can I say?”

  Meow Meow giggled. “Ain’t that the truth.” She gave Cruze an appraising look as Dante hefted him from the bed and onto a wheeled chair he’d pulled from a desk. “He wouldn’t be too bad if he showered and shaved. And wasn’t so drunk. I like a guy with some cushion.”

  Jacey grabbed Cruze’s feet to keep them from dragging and steered the chair while Dante pushed. “Where will we put him?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Jacey thought that was extraordinarily unhelpful. She opened the door to the hallway and peered out. “Won’t the cameras see us?”

  “Yes. But we’re going to act like he’s drunk, right?”

  As they pushed poor Cruze into the hall, an elderly woman in a salmon colored muumuu tottered out of the room across from them. “Oh dear!”

  “He’s ha’ a bid a the ol’ KT,” Jacey said, slurring and staggering as if she’d had just as much.

  Dante laughed breathlessly and wiped his eyes. In a warbling falsetto he sang, “Cruuuuuuze-ay can’t hold his booooooozay!”

  Jacey pretended to nearly collapse with laughter.

  “What happened to his face?” the old woman demanded. “He’s bleeding!”

  Jacey dropped his feet and straightened, swaying and burping. “He fell on the toy . . . the toy . . . the toilet.”

  Dante jabbed a thumb at his chest. “That’s what we skaters call a ‘face can.’” His eyes squinted shut and his mouth gaped as a squeaky laugh rasped in his throat.

  Jacey didn’t get it at all, but the old lady did. She suddenly yanked out her upper teeth and waved them over her head. “I lost my choppers in a half-pipe forty years ago. Lost my stoke for a whole year after that.” She popped in her teeth. “Make sure you get some ice on that gnarly gash.”

  “Yes, mama.” He winked at her.

  She winked back. “Knock on my door once you sober up.” She fluffed her cotton ball hairdo and walked away. Jacey noticed a definite exaggeration in the sway of her hips.

  Dante blew out his cheeks and started pushing the chair the opposite way. “I think there’s an ice machine down here.”

  Jacey picked up Cruze’s feet again and they shuffled and wheeled the unconscious man down the hall and into an alcove just off the elevators. Inside, a huge machine hummed. Next to it stood a food and drink dispenser.

  Dante propped the man’s head in the corner, then scooped ice into a plastic bag he pulled from a pocket. He tied the top shut and wedged the bag between the wall and Cruze’s wounded temple. “That’ll have to do. Let’s get out of here.”

  By the time they got back to their suite, Meow Meow had changed into skin-tight black leather pants and a loose black top with a square neckline that revealed her protruding clavicles. A beige canvas duffle hung over her bony shoulder. Everything they owned was in it. They’d dumped their old clothes off the side of El Tiburón, the freighter that had rescued them from the open sea three days earlier.

  “I’ve called a limo,” Meow Meow said, pulling on her blue wig. The hair was longer in front than in back, with a jagged sort of cut on the sides.

  Dante dug in his pants pocket and showed her the chips they’d stolen from Cruze. “Do you think a charter sub-orb will accept chips in payment?”

  “This is Casino San Juan. Everything is paid for in chips. That’s how they avoid taxes.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Meow Meow arched an eyebrow at him. “I’m in the entertainment industry. I’ve performed in every casino from New Mexico City to Prince Edward Rock. I got paid in chips most of the time. The casino managers all think you’ll be tempted to gamble and lose them.” She tapped her head with a finger. “But I’m smart. I save my money. That’s why I’ve had a long career.”

  “But you’re only twenty-eight,” Jacey said.

  “Like I said, a long career.” She adjusted her wig, then slipped on a pair of black plastic-framed eyeglasses with no lenses. “Hey, look. Now I’m smart.”

  “Let’s go,” Dante said. “Before somebody finds Cruze and he reports being beat up by you.”

  “He won’t remember anything,” Meow Meow said. “I could smell the KT on his breath.”

  “What does that stand for, anyway?” Jacey called from the bathroom as she changed into pants Meow Meow called jeans. Her shirt was a stylishly ragged black tank top printed across the front with a black bat silhouetted on a yellow oval. Meow Meow said it was vintage.

  “Kille-Tine,” the scrawny girl said as she stuffed Jacey’s dress into her duffle bag.

  “And what is that?” Jacey checked the mirror and straightened her veil. She hardly recognized herself, staring through a raccoon mask of blue makeup Meows had painted around her eyes.

  In response to Jacey’s question, Dante looked at Meow Meow. They shook their heads and rolled their eyes.

  “I’ll explain on the way to Chicago,” Dante said.

  He held the door as Jacey and Meow Meow slipped into the hall.

  Jacey asked, “And will I finally be able to get on a holodesk there?”

  “Yes. Everything is available in Chicago.”

  “How far is it?”

  “A few thousand kilometers. Why?”

  “I’ve told you a thousand times. I need to contact my friends. Now. They’re at sea, wondering where to go.”

  “Where were you planning on telling them to go?”

  The question made her mouth snap shut. She’d been so focused on warning them away from Elizabeth’s island that she hadn’t thought about where to send them.

  “We’ll talk on the sub-orb,” Meow Meow said, glancing toward the ice machine room where they’d left Cruze. A hotel worker was rolling a cart toward them from far down the hall.

  They stepped into the elevator. Meow Meow busied herself with attaching a veil over her face as the doors closed. “I bet you’re loving this,” she purred at Dante. “A sexy woman on each arm.”

  “I don’t hate it.”

  The elevator doors slid open and they stepped into the cacophony of the casino floor. Jacey refused to hold onto Dante’s arm.

  They cut through an aisle flanked by slot machines that blipped and blooped at them. Saggy humans hunched in front of the holo displays, eyes glazed over as they won and lost credits.

  One man was using two machines at once. He hit the same button over and over on one machine, not even looking at it. Jacey wondered why he bothered. Where was the reward in betting meaningless credits on outcomes you couldn’t control?

  A hand clamped around her arm and she was nearly yanked from her feet. A squawk of surprise escaped her lips, but she managed to turn it into a drunken-sounding laugh when she realized it was Dante pulling her aside.

  “Wilcox,” he said.

  Jacey followed his gaze.

  The man was dressed better than most of the men here. Black suit, crisp white shirt. He carried himself with a soldier’s strut. People instinctively mo
ved out of his way. Three other men ranged around him, also obviously soldiers.

  At Captain Wilcox’s side walked a very short and stout man with a droopy face and enormous mustache. It was the captain of El Tiburón, the ship that had brought Jacey and the others to Puerto Rico. He had a bruise on one cheek.

  And he was crying.

  3

  Par Excellence

  With the wing doors open on the navigation bridge of Aphrodite, warm, moist air whirled through and carried away most of the sour sweat and stale coffee smell emanating from Orson, the ship’s pilot.

  The lights were off, except for a single bulb wrapped in transparent red plastic to help preserve night vision. It shined its bloody glow over a console of levers and switches and screens. Humphrey had learned the general function of most of the controls, but he didn’t trust himself to pilot the boat.

  The thirty-meter freighter rose and fell on long swells, rocking slowly side to side in a motion that Humphrey’s legs had finally learned to predict. In the few hours he’d snatched for sleep, he’d discovered the motion almost comforting.

  That said, one could argue that Aphrodite was the least safe place he’d ever been. For one, it was more rust than steel. And despite Summer’s best efforts, the engines were none too reliable. And then there was the fact that they were being hunted by a fleet of military ships.

  A muted clanging came from the ceiling. Summer was still on the roof, trying to get a satellite receiver functioning so they could access data from the outside world. And more importantly, so they could communicate with Jacey.

  At the moment, Vaughan’s fifteen-centimeter-tall holo stood atop the great mahogany desk the Scions had hauled to the bridge. It had once been a fixture in Dr. Carlhagen’s office back on St. Vitus.

  Vaughan’s holo did not appear to be doing anything at the moment, but Humphrey knew there were several other instances of him alive and busy in the simulated Scion School inside the server’s electronic brain.

  Orson tapped the spinning radar screen and scratched his wiry beard with a dirty fingernail. “We’ll have to turn and slow to ten knots so that bugger can go ahead of us.”

  The bugger he was referring to was a massive freighter that would smash Aphrodite to scrap and never notice.

  Orson slumped on his stool and swiveled to consult the battered map stretched across a plain steel table mounted to the floor.

  Humphrey wrinkled his nose at the odor coming off the man. Since a Scion guard accompanied Orson’s every movement, he’d apparently opted to not bathe during his time off.

  Admittedly, the man hadn’t had much time off. Eluding a military fleet had required focus and a lot of what Orson referred to as “old smugglers’ tricks.” These had amounted to skirting close to one island and then another, then slipping into a heavily trafficked shipping lane where freighters ten times the size of Aphrodite plowed through the sea at breakneck speeds.

  They steamed along a roughly north/south course during the day, then turned due west at night, as they were doing right now.

  That’s when the danger began, because Aphrodite ran without lights. That meant they’d be hard to spot by patrol aircraft, but it also meant the giant freighters couldn’t see them, either.

  Already they’d had one close call that had resulted in a last-moment maneuver that had tumbled half the bunks in Girls’ Hold, despite the tie-downs meant to keep them upright. A Crab, Suki, had broken her arm and now wore it in a makeshift cast Wanda had fashioned.

  “How much farther?” Humphrey asked for the millionth time. Their destination was apparently not on the map.

  “We’ll be in range by morning, but we’ll have to bear north during daylight. Get Math Boy up here to figure it out. We have to go slow all day so we can turn south and make a run for the island. It’ll take a couple hours to offload everything, then rig her to blow. All that before dawn.”

  The “math boy” was Obu, the Spider from Humphrey’s Nine. Humphrey grabbed the P.A. mic and summoned him.

  He didn’t have to wait long. The boy appeared on the bridge, huffing from the run up the ship’s central staircase.

  Obu was a quiet 14-year-old with a flat nose, and ears that stuck out like wings. But there was a firmness to his jaw that suggested future handsomeness. At least, that’s what Humphrey had overheard Bethancy say.

  “Hey, Humphrey?” Summer called from outside.

  Humphrey jerked his head toward Orson and Obu presented himself respectfully to the pilot. As Orson described the speeds, distances, and timing he needed Obu to calculate, Humphrey went out onto the bridge wing, a steel-grated platform that gave a view over the deck.

  Summer appeared above him, her toes jutting from the edge of the roof. She wore that weird hat with the leaping deer on the front, hair tucked inside. If it weren’t for her feminine lips and eyes, she might have passed for a 12-year-old boy rather than a girl of fourteen. Black grease marks smudged her nose and cheeks. Humphrey was reminded how fortunate they’d been that she hadn’t been overwritten by her Progenitor, Senator Bentilius.

  “Ask Vaughan if that did it,” she said, twirling a ratchet wrench in one hand.

  Humphrey ducked onto the bridge. “Vaughan? Do you have data coming?”

  His old friend’s holo didn’t respond.

  “Vaughan?”

  Summer slid down from the roof. She took one look at Vaughan’s frozen image and went to the server box sitting at the back corner. She rapped it with her knuckles, checked the connections, and muttered to herself. “Everything is connected correctly.”

  Belle’s holo materialized next to Vaughan’s. She was staring at him, a slightly worried expression on her face. “We’re getting data. He’s got one instance of himself talking to me in here. It’s like he’s straining under a great weight, though. Hold on a second.”

  Wanda came in. The Eagle girl had her hair loose, red spirals defying gravity. She wore her uniform pants and a white tank top that Scion girls were only to wear during exercise with Sensei. That rule was defunct now. Humphrey expected to see less of the Mandarin collared tops the Scions had worn all their lives. Wanda had affixed her Eagle pin to her shirt like a badge.

  He averted his eyes from her bare shoulders. It was hard to be around her. An attraction had blossomed between them. They’d even kissed once. But they both knew it couldn’t be repeated. He loved Jacey. He ached for her.

  What he felt for Wanda was different. Exactly how it was different he couldn’t say. It just was. But it didn’t mean he didn’t want to hold her.

  She flashed a green-eyed look of disapproval at him, though not an unkindly one. “I thought I’d find you up here. You should get some sleep.”

  “Summer just got data flowing to Vaughan and Belle.”

  Wanda’s hand absently touched Humphrey’s back as she came to stand next to him, a butterfly-soft touch. She snatched it away and stepped a few feet to the side. She obviously found it as difficult as he did to be near without touching.

  Belle seemed to be listening to a conversation they couldn’t hear. “Vaughan says it’s glorious.”

  “What’s glorious?” Humphrey asked.

  “The data flow.”

  “Has he found an alternate destination for us?” They were heading to a compound Mr. Justin and Orson had prepared as part of their scheme to steal the Scions and sell them off. They were going there for lack of a better place. At least it would offer facilities for seventy-plus Scions.

  “What?” Belle asked Vaughan, whose holo image was still frozen. “Are you serious?”

  “Belle, what is going on?” Humphrey demanded.

  Orson and Summer had crowded next to the holodesk as well.

  Vaughan’s image jittered, then starting moving smoothly. He finally spoke. “It’s Jacey. Look.”

  A rectangular window appeared above Vaughan. It wasn’t a holographic image, just a flat video. It showed Jacey standing next to Vin. A narrator was talking about how Vin Burnell, a previou
sly unknown granddaughter of the famous Elizabeth Burnell, had “gone public” today. Even more stunning, the narrator said, was Ms. Burnell’s remarkable friend, who looked exactly like Jacqueline Buchanan.

  The video cut to an image of Jacey in a suit and trousers, firing a pistol at five men holding machine guns. She then leaped into a flying side-kick, taking another man in the face.

  “What’s she gotten herself into?” Wanda cried.

  “It’s from a Jacqueline Buchanan movie,” Vaughan said. “That’s not our Jacey.”

  The narrator continued talking about how Vin Burnell was the sole heir to Elizabeth Burnell’s fortune, estimated to be worth north of $80 billion by the financial news site RBW.

  The image cut again, showing another very familiar face.

  “That’s Ping!” Summer said.

  “Not anymore,” Humphrey grumbled. “Overwritten.”

  The narrator’s tone turned dark. “Another heir to a great fortune was in attendance. The real estate magnate Han Xi left his billions to Ping Xi, who has apparently been keeping a very low profile. Unfortunately, Ping was found dead of a gunshot wound in Vin’s mansion earlier today, disrupting the party that followed her official ‘coming out’ press event. No other information is available, as the scene was sealed by Vin Burnell’s personal security force.”

  The video showed Ping lying across a bed, a pixelated blur covering his face. A pistol lay at his side.

  Finally, the narrator herself appeared and spoke to the camera: “Any one of these appearances would be big news, but to have these individuals at the same event is nothing short of weird. Joining me is Rio James, celebrity expert and host of Rio Says, which airs right here on SNN every Saturday morning. Rio, what do you make of these events on Elizabeth Burnell’s private island?”

  The camera showed a man with pure white hair that stood straight up from his head. His eyes were painted a bright blue and he wore the same color on his lips. His jacket and tie both sparkled as if covered with tiny gemstones. “Weird does not begin to describe it! Anyone who knows anything about Elizabeth Burnell—which, let’s face it, is the entire population of the world—can see that this Vin person looks exactly like Elizabeth did when she was a young woman. And then we have this delicious young Jacqueline Buchanan lookalike! Who is she? Where has she been hiding? And don’t get me started about this poor young man Ping. I don’t usually follow business executive gossip, but everyone knows Han Xi, one of the richest men in the world. While my heart goes out to Ping’s family, my mind is about to explode with curiosity. Ping looks exactly like Han did at the same age.”