Broken Mirror (43 page)

Victor ran to the corner and looked toward the plaza. A gust of wind thinned the sleeping gas. Police officers had subdued some of the fighters and placed them in restraints.

When Victor turned back, Elena was gone.

He sprinted to the back entrance of the café, avoiding the Puro who was mouthing the word “please” over and over and bleeding onto the concrete. The door was locked.

Where did she go? Why would she leave without him? He ran, panicking. The alley twisted around and met another alley, which led back to the plaza in one direction and a parking area in another.

A hand gripped his shoulder. Victor jumped and turned.

Elena mouthed, “Victor, come back.” She led him to the bloody Puro.

Elena knelt and put her hand on the Puro’s arm, which was wrapped around his wounded stomach. She gently pried it away and lifted his blood-soaked shirt, revealing a curving slice deep in his gut. The weapon might have nicked a vein
—
there was so much blood
—
and possibly his intestines.

A med kit sat next to her. She must have retrieved it from the café.

Victor saw her lips move and heard part of what she said. The only word he recognized was “artery.”

Elena leaned over the young man and used pieces of gauze from the kit to wipe blood from his wound. Her fingers walked on his skin, examining the path the knife had taken and perhaps visualizing what vital subdermal pieces of the Puro the blade had encountered. Victor felt as if every one of his nerves were ready to fire at the same time, but she seemed calm, focused, her movements measured and confident.

“We need to get him to a hospital,” she said, though her voice sounded far away. “Victor, call your car.”

He started to respond with a disbelieving retort—
There’s no way he’s getting in my car!
—when the Puro grasped her arm and said, “No hospital. Please help me, Elena.”

“You’re hurt, dumbass.” Elena tore a roll of gauze into strips. “You need a doctor.”

The Puro was struggling to communicate. “Doctors fine. But hospital means police. Can’t get caught. You can be my pretty doctor.” The Puro’s weak smile vanished when she applied more pressure to his wound. “Nice touch,” he said through sharp and shallow breaths.

“How does he know your name?” Victor asked.

“We’re acquainted,” she said.

He saw in her expression evasiveness, stubbornness, and a purple hint of pride.

The Puro looked at Victor. “I have money. If you can keep me alive and away from the police, I’ll give you thousands.”

“That’s not going to work on him,” Elena said. She turned to Victor sharply. “Call your car!”

“You’re not serious!”

“Trust me,” she said without looking up from the Puro.

He summoned the car, but got no response. “There’s no signal. I don’t get it. There should be a signal. The tower is right over there.”

“Forget it. Go to your car and bring it here. We’ll load him in.” She gave him her stunstick. “Watch out for Tosh.”

He’d never held one before. They conjured up too many memories of Carmichael.

He said, “But—”

“Go! Run!”

Victor felt numb. It didn’t matter that he wanted to leave. Elena was begging for his help, and he couldn’t say no, despite her deception. He ran for his car.

“I’ll pay you back for this,” Chico said weakly. “Whatever you want. A million AUD.”

Elena applied pressure to his wound. “Bribery is bad manners. And Xavi wouldn’t approve.”

Chico smiled at her through heavy lids. “You think I’m cute when I’m bleeding all over you.”

“Shut up.” The sight of blood didn’t bother her, though it oozed in thick and heavy rivulets across his exposed stomach.

Chico’s face, despite the sweat coming off it and his painful grimace, was nicely shaped. He had smooth skin and a surly mouth. She felt a sudden urge to kiss him.
Symptoms confirmed
—
I have a fetish for desperately helpless guys.

“Do you like my scars?” he teased. “I got more that I can show you.”

“Is that a bad circumcision joke? Stop kidding around, or I’ll punch you in the knife hole.”

“You wouldn’t punch a dying man.”

“Dying?” She laughed, intending to reassure him, but it sounded like a bark. “I don’t think so.”

She shifted and pulled Chico’s torso onto her lap, keeping pressure on his wound.

Chico’s eyes were a rich brown with dark, long lashes. As attractive as Victor, he was also street smart and emotionally normal, for a Texan dickie. Plus he understood the Puro life. A good catch
—
for her. She couldn’t expect much more from the world, and she deserved what she got.

A siren whooped. Paramedics were somewhere nearby. They wouldn’t help Chico. The orange-tinted scars on his arms and belly were too noticeable. They’d turn him over to the police, and she would be charged with murdering Corps. That was the best-case scenario. More likely she could expect whichever policeman showed up to have a monster-sized grudge against the Puros. She’d heard of police killing dickies on sight and then covering up their crime.

Only Puros cared about other Puros. That was the first lesson they’d taught her when they’d pulled her from the path of an oncoming train.

Elena twisted her neck and watched the entrance to the alley. Before Victor had run off, she’d seen the resonance start to come back. Hopefully he hadn’t blankly wandered into the dickie war zone.

Elena held her hands against Chico’s wound. His eyes were closed; he’d passed out.

Five minutes passed. Was Victor coming back? she wondered. Maybe the Corps had found him.

Oh, shocks, the chip!
She’d forgotten about it.

Gooseflesh rose on her arms. If Lucky and Bandit hadn’t caught Victor yet, they would find her soon. That bitch Linda must have arranged to have her chipped. She would never set foot in an Eastmore-run hospital or clinic again.

Chico stirred in her arms. “Am I going to be okay?” he asked.

“You won’t bleed out,” she said, “but you’ll still be dumb as a brick.”

“Elena Morales, you can be a real
bruja
, you know that?” He found her arm and squeezed it. “Sorry. Thank you. Don’t let me die, or I’ll haunt you bad.”

Her heart thudded. She should be taking action, not just sitting here. Chico’s chances of survival were decreasing every minute. She couldn’t let him die in her arms. She couldn’t live with that memory.

Laws, she wanted stimsmoke to get her through this day.

It had been two days since her last puff, and more than a month clean before that. But it couldn’t be helped. Call it the cost of minding Victor, which she’d screwed up royally. Now this mess. She would go on the smoke again next chance she got.

What was she doing with a Broken Mirror anyway?

Stop. He doesn’t deserve to be called that.

Strivers, assholes, and meanmouths called him a Broken Mirror, but he was better than that.
She
was better than that. And she was the only person he could count on. That meant something. She had a responsibility to him. Just as he had one to her. So where the hell
was
he?

The lyrics of a Twisted Funburst song popped into her head.
For love or money, I’ll stick with you like glue.
It repeated, just the chorus, again and again, droning in her brain.

Stop it. Do something useful
.

Elena made a list of the steps she would take as soon as Victor arrived. Get Chico into the car. Find the Puros. Take a look at the wound. Treat it. Keep him alive.

And then?

As much as she wanted to help Victor get to the kennel safely, the Puros couldn’t let an attack like this go unpunished. The carnage in the plaza
—
an attack in broad daylight
—
was on a scale beyond anything they’d experienced. This wasn’t about harassing Puros
—
this was about destroying them. And if she was honest with herself, she knew it had something to do with Victor. Could Lucky and Bandit have teamed up with the Corps? Elena looked toward the end of the alley. How many Puros and Corps were out there, bleeding, dead, or captured? She’d seen four, maybe five. Whatever they thought was so damned important about Victor, it wasn’t worth all of
this
.

The Puros would want to retaliate right away. They might even take her back if she helped them fight. But the Puros taking on the Corps was the equivalent of a fly swatting a human. They would be crushed. It would make a good distraction, though, and might give Victor an opening to get inside the kennel. Which was worth more? Her surrogate family or Victor’s truth?

She heard the crackling of wheels and an engine’s purr. Victor’s car turned the corner, rolled forward, and stopped in front of her. He got out and paced, flicking his gaze between the entrance to the alley and Elena’s patient. His face wavered between anger, fear, and the terrible blankness of a resonant episode.

“Grab his feet,” Elena said. She tried not to think about the trouble ahead. “We’ll put him in the back, and I’ll hold him while you drive.” She gently patted Chico’s face. “Chico, wake up. You need to tell us where to go.”

His eyes didn’t open, and fear froze her lungs. Was he dead?

Although the Universal Small Arms Control Treaty laid a strong foundation, it was the failed attempt on President Kennedy’s life, which eerily echoed the one on President Lincoln’s a century earlier, that finally solidified public opinion in favor of gun restrictions in the American Union. Less than one month later, the A.U. Council of Representatives passed a unionwide ban on gun manufacturing, distribution, and ownership.

Modeled after similar efforts in Europe, the prohibition was phased in over several years and included significant economic incentives for gun owners to voluntarily give up their arms. The emergence of nonlethal and effective weapons for personal protection speeded the transition. The ban was challenged in the courts but eventually upheld, and it remains the law of the land.

—“Small Arms Control in the American Union” (MeshKnows article)

Victor picked up the unconscious but still alive Chico by the torso while Elena grappled with his legs. It was a hard-fought victory to load him in the car: his body sagging and swaying as they took small steps forward, the car door refusing to open itself on Victor’s grunted command until the third try, Elena dropping Chico’s legs and running around to the other side of the car so she could climb in and pull him through, and Victor lifting and shoving so Chico’s head and shoulders finally rested on Elena’s lap in the backseat. Blood streaked across the upholstery and Victor’s shirt.

Victor got in, put the car in gear, and drove down the alley to the main road, keeping it in manual mode. “Where to?” he asked.

Elena coaxed Chico to consciousness and asked for the safe house address. His eyes fluttered as he said, “Fifteen Baldwin Street.”

Elena directed Victor. “Left here. A couple kilometers.”

“You’ve been there before?” Victor asked.

She said, “Never in my life.”

Digging into his pocket, Victor took out a few leaves of fumewort and put them in his mouth. Sucking their sustenance was less effective than taking a tincture, but he didn’t trust his coordination to single-handedly uncork a vial while driving. He mashed his jaws to get saliva flowing. The leaves began to soften and give up their pungent bitterness.

“Wait, stop!” Elena yelled. “Back there. That drugstore.” She rattled off a list of necessities.

Victor parked in front. “You want me to go in there looking like this?” He held up his bloody hands.

“Yes. Just be quick.”

Five minutes later, pulse racing from the awkward stare of the drugstore clerk, who had noticed the blood on Victor but hadn’t mentioned it, he returned to the car with gauze, medical paste, and pills that might save the Puro’s life.

They arrived at the house on Baldwin Street, a small two-story building with a driveway, shielded from its neighbors by tall hedges. Another car was parked in the carport, so Victor pulled up behind it.

Nothing from the outside would identify the house as a hideout for dangerous thugs. A wood-shingled roof. Slightly rusting rain gutters. Chipped white paint everywhere except for the dark red window frames. Victor heard chugging sounds from a few small chiller units dotting the exterior windows.

Victor and Elena got out of the car, and immediately three men with clean-shaven heads emerged from the house, followed by two women wearing odd, bell-shaped hats. The men approached and bookended Victor. When they recognized Elena and she told them about Chico, they helped ease the wounded Puro out of the car.

The leader—who issued orders to the others in a surprisingly melodious voice
—
was tall and broad-chested, with an orange scar running from his temple toward his ear. “What happened?” he asked.

Chico’s eyes fluttered open as he was conveyed on the dickies’ arms toward the front door. He said, “We were ambushed. The Corps. A lot of them.”

The leader asked, “Where is everyone else?”

Chico shook his head and passed out.

Elena called, “Put Chico on the couch, tell him not to move, and get him some water.”

“Tell me what’s going on,” the leader said as he drew Elena toward the corner of the yard.

Victor waited by his car, awkwardly avoiding the gazes of the two dickie women who remained on the porch whispering to each other. Elena and the leader argued, momentarily forgetting about Victor, which was fine with him. He tried to wipe Chico’s blood from his arms, succeeding only in spreading it around.

The leader, Xavi, yelled at Elena, “You take care of Chico, and then you leave,” and went inside.

Elena pulled Victor toward the front door, saying, “Come on.”

Victor resisted. “We should get out of here. The longer we stay in one place . . .”

Elena grabbed his hand and said, “Look, Victor, this is one of those situations that you could very easily screw up. Play it cool, and Xavi might help us at the kennel.”