Twisted Fates Read online

  She could offer Roman the one thing of value she’d had on her, the exotic matter that would allow him to travel through time. Working with Roman meant joining the Black Cirkus, a notoriously vicious local gang. It meant becoming someone ruthless herself.

  But her other choice was to try and navigate the horrors of New Seattle on her own.

  Dorothy hadn’t been in the future for long, but even she knew that bad things happened to a girl who showed up in a strange place without family or friends or allies. In the end, it had been no choice at all.

  And if she sometimes found herself thinking about the pilot with the gold eyes and wondering what might’ve happened if she’d only gone to him and explained who she was and when she’d come from . . .

  Well. All she had to do was remind herself of the first time she and Ash had met, back in a churchyard in 1913. She could instantly recall the look of disdain he’d gotten in those eyes, the sound of his voice when he told her that, no, he wouldn’t be able to help her.

  It was that no she couldn’t stop thinking about. She couldn’t bear to hear it again, not after everything that had happened between them.

  And so, over time, she’d gotten better at brushing the other, fonder memories aside.

  She’d made her choice. There was no going back now.

  2

  Ash

  NOVEMBER 5, 2077, NEW SEATTLE

  Back in New Seattle, near twilight. The sky was a thin, watery green, the same color as the pea soup Ash used to get in his rations back in the war. He could almost feel the weight of it pressing down on him, like a warning of things to come.

  He tensed, thinking, Seven days.

  Professor Walker had once told him that you could premember something up to a year into the future. It was the “up to a year” part that Ash had been focusing on, recently. Because he’d first seen the prememory of his own death 358 days ago.

  Which meant that, at best, he had seven days left to live. Less than that, probably.

  Help me find Dorothy, and I’ll go without a fight.

  Chandra fidgeted as the guards patted Ash down. It would be easier to ignore the stormy sky if they were standing anywhere other than the docks on the Aurora waterway, which was the seediest part of New Seattle. The city had always had a sex trade, but the earthquake had brought it out into the open, made it seem almost legitimate. Now the motels along what used to be the Aurora highway proudly advertised what they sold.

  The misty rain had plastered Chandra’s hair to the back of her neck and sent droplets rolling down her dark skin. She kept her eyes trained on the guards, lips pressed together to keep them from trembling. The two men looked more like hunks of granite than like people. The lines of their faces were sharp and hard, their eyes near black in the strange, green light. Rain glimmered off the assault rifles hanging from their backs.

  Gnarled fingers dug into Ash’s pockets and fumbled with the lining of his jacket, searching for weapons.

  He let his eyes linger on their rifles for a moment before moving them back to the sky.

  “Tornado sky,” his mother would’ve called it.

  He could picture her now, standing on their front porch, tapping one of his dad’s Camels out of its pack. She’d stick the cigarette between her teeth, lighting it in her cupped hand as she watched the sky through slits of eyes.

  “Storm’ll blow in soon,” she’d warn, shaking the match out.

  But she wouldn’t go inside. Real Nebraskans didn’t run from tornadoes, not until the clouds turned black and formed a wall that touched from sky to ground. Not until the rain fell sideways, and the wind came through strong enough to blow you back a step.

  Ash held that image of his mother in his head now: unafraid as she stared down the tornado sky. It wasn’t bravery that kept her on the porch while the storm rolled closer. It was pure, animal stubbornness. Somewhere deep in her blood, she thought she could scare the storm away, keep it from taking what was hers. That same blood ran through his veins, for better or worse.

  But Dorothy was never yours, said a voice at the back of his head. And you don’t even know if she survived.

  Ash flinched, like the voice was a gnat buzzing at his ear. One of the guards glanced at him, frowning. Ash gritted his teeth, keeping his eyes focused on the horizon, until the guard grunted and continued his search.

  It was true, Dorothy hadn’t been his. But she’d been lost during his mission. He’d agreed to take her back in time, to the year 1980, to search for Professor Zacharias Walker, his old mentor. He’d known how dangerous it would be to travel through the anil with such a meager supply of exotic matter, and he’d done it anyway. And then, when the EM began to fail, Dorothy had risked her life to change the exotic matter in the Second Star midflight, saving them all.

  And then the ship had crashed. And Dorothy had vanished into the anil.

  I don’t think she died, Zora had told Ash in the days immediately following the crash. She had the EM on her. . . . Maybe she only missed us by a few months.

  It wasn’t an entirely foolish thing to hope for. The anil was volatile, with winds that rose above 100 knots, and storms constantly flickering around the cloudy tunnel walls, but the exotic matter Dorothy had been holding might’ve created a kind of protective bubble around her, keeping the anil’s inclement weather at bay. Ash had never heard of a human being surviving the anil without a time machine, but he had to believe it was possible. He simply couldn’t bear the alternative.

  They’d lost contact with Dorothy only seconds before crashing back in 2077. If she’d survived, she could already be here, somewhere, in this godforsaken city. Ash just had to find her before someone else did.

  “He’s clean,” said the guard, dropping his hands.

  The other guard grunted, turning to Chandra. “And her?”

  Chandra squirmed under his hungry eyes, tugging on her T-shirt. The shirt was intentionally too small, to show off her figure. This was a key part of their plan but, still, Ash’s cheeks burned as he caught a glimpse of her bare skin from the corner of his eye. He’d spent most of the afternoon pretending her body ended at her neck.

  “You know what Mac says about touching the merchandise.” The first guard nodded, a hard jerk of his square jaw. “Let ’em past.”

  Merchandise. Ash had never realized how many muscles there were in his face, how hard it was to focus on each of them at the same time, willing them to stay still when all they wanted to do was grimace at the ugliness of what had just been said.

  Not a girl; not a human being.

  Merchandise.

  He didn’t think he’d ever hated anyone as much as he hated Mac at that moment. He didn’t know the man personally, but he’d heard of him. Unfortunately. Everyone in New Seattle had heard of Mac Murphy, owner of the city’s grimiest brothel. He was a toad of a human being, both in physical appearance, and in general effect on the world around him. Ash wished it were physically possible to squish him beneath his shoe. The world would be a better place if Mac Murphy were just green sludge on the sole of his boot.

  There was a beat of silence, and then the second guard shuffled to the side, licking his lips. “Go on then, honey,” he said, eyes on Chandra.

  “Move,” Ash murmured, voice low, nudging Chandra forward.

  She stumbled, shoulders hunched up near her ears.

  “Oh God,” she said, walking steadier now. She tried, again, to tug her T-shirt lower, as though she could make it grow several more inches through sheer force of will.

  Ash tipped his head as they walked past the horrible men with guns. He was careful not to move too quickly and to keep his shoulders relaxed, like this was all normal. Something he did every day.

  The green sky lit up. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  Not an omen, Ash told himself.

  Keep walking.

  Mac’s brothel crouched at the end of the dock like an animal waiting to pounce on its prey. It used to be a motel, the kind of place with a flicke
ring vacancy light, and rooms that could be rented by the hour. It’d been horrible even before the floods had made everything horrible; now, it was hell. Only the top two floors were still above the water, a thick carpet of black mold crawling up their dingy, yellow siding. There wasn’t glass in the windows, but Mac had covered some of them with cardboard and old blankets to keep what little warmth there was left inside the building. The rest of the windows yawned open, reminding Ash of broken teeth.

  Mac himself sat in a moth-eaten chair inside the first motel room off the dock, feet kicked up on his makeshift desk, which was just a moldy piece of wood balanced over two stacks of cinder blocks. The door was propped open with a brick, and Mac had a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He was a squat man with a barrel chest, and his face really did have a toad-like quality: eyes too far apart; big, peeling chapped lips. Ash half expected his tongue to flick out of his mouth and snap up a nearby fly.

  Mac chewed on his thick bottom lip, cigarette dangling. “You got business here, son?”

  His eyes lingered on Chandra’s T-shirt, and Ash felt a flash of anger deep in his gut.

  “Heard you paid for girls,” Ash said, working hard to keep his voice steady.

  Chandra shifted her eyes to the floor, shoulders bunched up around her ears. She sniffled in a small, pitiful way, and Ash felt a flush of pride. He knew she was scared, but this, at least, was pure performance. In fact, it reminded him of a television show about the Wild West that she’d been watching the week before. This was why he’d asked Chandra to help him out with this little mission. Zora was a crap actress.

  Mac leaned back in his chair, considering her. After a moment he said, “She ain’t much to look at.”

  It took every bit of willpower Ash had not to knock the cigarette from Mac’s mouth right then and there.

  He caught a scowl shaping Chandra’s lips and elbowed her. She quickly transformed it into the beginning of a sob. Hands balled at her mouth, silent tears.

  Mac let his chair drop back down to all fours. “But there’s no accounting for taste around here. Some of my clients like ’em different. I could give you . . .” He paused, digging something out of his teeth with his thumbnail. Shrugging, he tried, “Fifty?”

  Ash swallowed, barely hearing the price. He prepared himself to say the thing he’d come here to say. “Would you take it in trade?”

  The words turned his stomach. People weren’t things to be traded. Or, they shouldn’t be. But here he was.

  Mac’s eyes narrowed, and Ash felt the muscles in his shoulders pull tight. Did he recognize him? Before the mega-quake, Ash’s face had been in the news here and there. He looked different now. His hair was longer and shaggier. He hadn’t bothered shaving since Dorothy had disappeared, and he had a little scruff on his cheeks.

  But, still, there were people around these parts who might remember the young pilot who was brought back from the past by a mad scientist. Ash had been counting on Mac not being one of those people. He didn’t look like the type to watch the news.

  Mac’s eyes lingered on him a moment longer. “You ain’t one of my regulars?”

  It sounded like a question, like Mac was trying to figure out where he recognized him from.

  Ash tensed. “No, sir, I’m not,” he said. “But I’ve been by the Rusty Nail now and then.”

  The Rusty Nail was a bar at the end of Aurora that Mac was known to frequent. Mac nodded, apparently satisfied with this explanation.

  Ash exhaled, relieved. “I heard you got a new girl. Real pretty. Brown hair.” I heard she bit the last guy who tried to touch her, Ash thought, but he didn’t say that part out loud.

  It was the biting detail that had caught his attention. He’d been at some trash bar on the outskirts of town when the guy next to him had yanked back his sleeve, showing off two swollen, moon-shaped welts in the crook of his arm.

  “Teeth,” he’d said, when he caught Ash looking. “Murphy’s new whore has a temper on her.”

  Dorothy, Ash had thought. He could easily picture her biting any man who tried to touch her without her permission.

  According to bite-mark guy, Mac’s new whore had shown up in a seedier part of the city about a month ago, lost and alone but pretty as a picture. She wouldn’t tell anyone her real name, but Mac was calling her Hope, and, Hey, wasn’t that ironic? Get it? Because she didn’t have any hope left. Followed by a hearty laugh.

  Ash had supplied the bite-mark guy with drinks and bowls of peanuts until he was reasonably sure he’d gotten the whole story.

  And then he’d taken him out behind the bar and beaten the living crap out of him.

  Because really.

  Now Mac’s face broke into a crooked smile that showed off several rotting teeth. “Oh, we got a new girl all right, but she’s worth a bit more than fifty.” A pause, like he was considering something. “I suppose I could let her go for twice that—and that’s me being generous, mind, what with you a new customer and all.”

  Ash had been expecting this. He dug around in his coat, pausing when he found the slim envelope he’d tucked inside the lining.

  The envelope contained his savings. It came to about seventy-five dollars. Just five creased and greasy bills. It felt like nothing at all.

  How was it that he was going to hand over this envelope and get a person in return?

  Dorothy’s face flashed into his head just then. He saw her as she’d been in those last few moments before she’d climbed out of his ship and disappeared into the storm. Grease-smudged face. Frizzed hair.

  In the space of seconds, his disgust was snatched away and replaced with hope. Let it be her, he prayed. Let it be this easy.

  He placed the envelope onto the rickety table, fingers tingling as he moved his hand away.

  Mac grabbed the money and greedily counted the bills. “This all seems to be in order.” He shoved the envelope down the back of his trousers and nodded at Chandra. “Come with me, doll.”

  “She stays here,” Ash said too quickly.

  Mac hesitated, eyebrows climbing his forehead. He looked suspicious for the first time since Ash walked in.

  “Did I miss the part where you give orders in my club?” he asked in a careful voice.

  Tread lightly, Ash thought, fear prickling up his spine. This wasn’t some fragile ego he was dealing with, not like the guy at the bar. Mac’s hatred was heartier than that.

  Mac was a gasoline-soaked rag—a single match and he’d explode.

  Ash weighed his words before saying, “I want to see the girl before I hand over the rest of the payment.”

  Mac shrugged, all casual. But the suspicion didn’t leave his eyes. “If you like.”

  He walked out of the room. Whistling.

  Chandra kept her head bowed until the hideous toad man was gone. Then she straightened, tossing her dark hair over one shoulder. Her eyes blazed. “When do I get to shoot him?”

  Ash glanced at her. She had his gun tucked down her pant leg, held snug by her sock. It was the only place he could be sure no one would look for it. Guards weren’t allowed to inspect the new girls before Mac did, after all. It was a flaw in the system that Ash was happy to exploit.

  “After he brings Dorothy out,” Ash said. “Then you can shoot his balls off for all I care.”

  Chandra favored him with a slow blink, perhaps imagining this exact scenario. She said, grinning, “Goody.”

  Fifteen minutes passed before Ash heard the approach of footsteps outside the motel room. The skin behind his ears prickled. He shifted his body between Chandra and the door.

  “Now you’re feeling protective,” Chandra muttered, bristling.

  Ash swallowed the sudden tightness in his throat. “Quiet.”

  “I’m just saying, you could’ve played the hero before, back when he was sexually assaulting me with his eyes.”

  Ash shot her a look, and Chandra mimed zipping her mouth shut.

  Mac walked past the window first. The curtains were drawn, but Ash
recognized his fat head through the yellowing fabric. A smaller shadow shuffled close behind him. A girl, her body slight and bent over.

  Ash felt his breath catch.

  Mac walked back into the room. “Behold,” he said, lip curling in what he must’ve thought was a smile. “The prettiest whore in all of New Seattle!”

  The girl appeared at the door. She was staring at her feet, dark hair covering her face.

  “Well?” Mac looked from the girl to Ash expectantly. “What do you think?”

  His voice lifted the girl’s head, and her dark hair parted like a curtain, revealing skin pale as china, bow-shaped lips, and eyes like a doll’s. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old, Ash realized, the hope draining out of him. She wasn’t Dorothy.

  A bruise colored the skin around her left eye. He wondered if that had been her punishment for biting the last man who’d stood where he was standing now.

  Mac said something else, but Ash couldn’t have said what it was. His blood was pumping in his ears, so loud that he couldn’t hear anything over it.

  “Chandra,” he said, trying and failing to keep the emotion from his voice. “Now.”

  Chandra lurched forward, faking a sudden coughing fit. She was faster than Ash had expected her to be, so fast that he wondered if she’d been practicing in her room back at the schoolhouse. Mac barely had time to frown at her and mutter something about bringing him sick girls before her hand was at her ankle, fingers curling around the gun tucked in her sock.

  She stood, one eye closing as she took aim.

  “Whoa.” Mac raised his hands, backing away. He looked at Ash. “What’s this? I thought we were dealing in good faith, here.”

  “Hey, toad face,” Chandra said. “Why are you looking at him? I’m the one with the gun.”

  Ash shrugged. “Sounds like you should be dealing with her.”

  Mac’s lips twitched, as though the very thought disgusted him. “You let a girl run your show, friend?”

  “As frequently as possible,” said Ash. “Now—”

  “Wait a second . . . I know you.” Mac’s beady eyes flicked over to Chandra and narrowed. “Yeah, and you. You’re part of that time travelers’ group, right? The Chronology whatever?”