Evenfall (111 page)

There was a moment when Boyd recognized that this could be an incredibly stupid move; he knew Jorge enough to banter with him but in truth they'd only been acquainted about a month and although the kid had led him through dangerous areas before, Boyd had never followed him in. And they'd certainly never descended into a building that Boyd knew he could easily get trapped in and attacked if he was betrayed. But even thinking that didn't stop him; he knew he would be able to get out of most situations and that Kadin would not have backed away if he were here.

Kadin Reed had a penchant for danger and dealing with the black market; that was what had gotten him into 53 in the first place. Boyd knew very well how interested he would have been in the smuggling groups so he felt no qualms with even very casually getting his name involved in the activity in Monterrey.

"
Huevσn
," Jorge said suddenly and something in the tone of those two syllables made Boyd stop where he was; it was not an insult this time, it was something closer to a warning. Jorge looked over his shoulder, his eyes gleaming faintly in the darkness, and jerked his chin forward. "I go first. Wait until I say."

Boyd nodded silently and watched him walk to the end of the hallway and disappear down a right turn. A few seconds passed and he could hear voices echoing from ahead of him but he couldn't understand what they were saying. Even though he could understand some Spanish, there were still many words he didn't know. And there was a surprisingly large variety of accents that made it difficult for him to comprehend when it was spoken too quickly. In this case, the echo was certainly not helping matters and Jorge had a tendency to use a lot of Spanish slang; sometimes he seemed to drop entire parts of words and use unknown suffixes and abbreviations.

Whatever they were saying took a few minutes and Boyd looked around the passageway as best he could in the dark. He'd heard that when the war first hit, some of the people feared that the fighting would spread across the globe, possibly destroying Earth's entire environment. The clouds closing in on even the brightest of locations must have been especially disturbing and so in many cities across the world, including Monterrey, some people took to building underground passages and bunkers to use in case they couldn't go above the surface.

Boyd thought that was a sign of paying too much attention to the old doomsday books and movies but he did have to admit that at least it was cooler down in the passage beneath
Farmαcia
, even if he doubted it would have saved them from radiation should there have been nuclear fallout above ground.

A scuffing noise drew his attention to the end of the hallway again and he looked over just in time to see Jorge gesture for him to follow. They entered a small door that Boyd had to tilt his head down to go through and emerged into a room that was probably two-thirds the size of Sin and his studio. He was mildly surprised to find two women at a table studying him.

One woman had black eyes and thick black hair held back in a messy bunch, her skin caramel-colored. He couldn't see much of what she was wearing from her angle, other than that she had a tank top and sleeveless coat on, with a gold necklace glittering at her throat in some sort of rectangular design with points on top. A deep red tattoo of a snake wrapped around her upper left arm, curving onto the front of her shoulder and disappearing beneath her clothing. She watched him very closely and by her body language he could tell she would be a good fighter, but her facial features were actually quite pleasant and almost friendly.   The woman next to her looked more like a punk; blue streaked her choppy dark brown hair and she wore several layers of tank tops with a pleated red and black plaid mini-skirt over black pants. Her boots had more buckles and chains than was necessary and she wore a belt with a large silver skull and cross-bone buckle. Another belt looped over that at an angle, pulled down by a sheathed pistol at her left hip, while a third, thinner chain belt seemed to carry some sort of small knives. A similar tattoo to the first woman's wound around her right arm but it was dark blue, and on her Boyd could see that the tongue of the snake licked out to end on her collarbone. Her left eyebrow was pierced with a silver loop and she had as many hoops dotting her ears as Sin did as Jason. She watched him lazily but he could tell she would be able to react quickly if she needed to.

The punk woman whistled slowly then smiled in a manner that showed off too many teeth. "We found ourselves a fox," she said, her accent English but somehow a little off. Boyd suspected she came from one of the other countries that England had once colonized.

He kept his body language almost looked bored as he glanced around the room, noting that Jorge was standing in the shadows near one wall with a decidedly neutral expression. He had expected the first woman to reply but when only silence met the comment, he turned back to the blue-haired woman.

He had no idea what he was supposed to be doing in there, what they wanted or expected, or even if he would accidentally do or say something wrong simply because he knew nothing about these people. He had asked Jorge to help him specifically because the smuggling groups and black market areas had many levels of security and some of them, like the ones he needed to work with in order to get the high-end materials, were completely inaccessible to anyone who did not have an in.

Without Jorge, Boyd knew he certainly would not have gotten the boxes and without a doubt he would not have even known these women existed. He'd tried to research them but there wasn't much to be found; they were known as the Snakes, they had access to the materials he needed, and some said they were not exactly like smugglers.

When he'd asked Jorge he wouldn't say much either; he just seemed to imply they were pirates who stole from smugglers and then he refused to say anything further, not even giving their names. That was probably to test Boyd to see what he would do.

Even though they weren't quite what he was expecting, he was vaguely relieved that at least neither of them seemed to be Mexican natives; if this transaction had been done in Spanish he didn't know if he would have made it without Jorge translating the words that were too fast for him to understand. Although the fact that the women were not from Mexico also explained why he'd heard especially heavy accents echoing into the hallway.

After a beat of silence, he finally drawled, "That gonna be a problem?"

The woman watched him, her lips slowly stretching into a smirk. She seemed pleased somehow but he didn't expect for that to necessarily make this any easier. She flicked her gaze to the other woman, who had not moved from her calm, politely interested scrutiny. "He's a bit of a hard case," she said smugly.

The long-haired woman finally turned her attention from Boyd to the woman who was speaking, though she only smiled faintly and didn't reply at first.

"I told you Jorge wouldn't bring us a wanker," the punk woman insisted as if the first woman had said something. She idly played with the strap sheathing the pistol at her hip and watched her as if waiting for something.

The long-haired woman looked at Boyd again thoughtfully. Although her pleasant features were a bit of a relief against the punk woman's more intimidating look, her silent, intense expressions were mildly unnerving. The fact that she still looked friendly somehow made the fact that she was doing nothing but scrutinizing him seem especially distracting. He also wished she'd just say something already.

As if she understood that wish, she asked smoothly, "Why are you here?"

Boyd was certainly not expecting the question and he blinked at her while he considered the answer. She seemed content to just sit in silence and wait, staring at him. "'Cause I was brought here," he said after a moment, watching her with an unruffled expression. Silence dragged between them and he realized she wanted more of an answer. "And maybe you two have the answer to a problem I've got."

The long-haired woman watched him with unwavering black eyes, nothing in her expression showing what she was thinking. "What was the question?"

"How to do something," Boyd answered.

She considered that, seeming to note the vagueness of his reply. "And you believe we have the answer to a question you cannot even ask fully aloud?" She asked it simply, curiously, but he knew it was a challenge wrapped in pleasantly polite words.

Boyd did not look away from her but he tried to note Jorge's expression in his peripheral vision. That didn't help, though; his expression was as neutral as it had been when he'd entered. The punk woman was watching Boyd with an amused expression that seemed strangely entertained, as if she was enjoying how odd this seemed to him and wanted to see how he'd react.

This was obviously some sort of test but the entire situation seemed odd to him, as if they were speaking in a code he hadn't been taught. He took a moment to try to decide on the best answer before he returned his gaze to the long-haired woman with a thoughtful, more serious expression. "There're lots of questions people can't ask aloud. Maybe you don't know the question; maybe you just can't get yourself to say it. But the whole point of asking's so you can realize what you need. Answers are like missing words to a question."

The woman stared at him for a long moment, her expression giving absolutely nothing away. The room seemed very still around him and he wondered if he'd said the wrong thing. But he wasn't about to specify exactly what he needed anything for; that would be sheer stupidity when dealing with the black market. The whole point of going underground was so no questions would be asked, which was why it was strange that she was pressing for answers. There was no real way to answer her question without ignoring it or giving away too much information so he chose the philosophical route which, judging by the tension building in the room, may have been a poor choice after all. He kept his posture almost bored, though, and waited for some sort of reaction.

The room was dead silent until the punk woman suddenly burst out laughing. "You people are too serious," she drawled. Boyd looked over at her just in time to see her grin widely, a flashing of teeth that seemed at once a challenge and a welcome. She pulled her boots off the table and sat down normally, the front chair legs thumping loudly on the cement floor. "I'm Tayla, this is Liani. Don't let her poker face fool you; she's actually an emotional mess inside."

Liani looked over at Tayla and raised her eyebrows. "That is a lie. But he will do."

With that simple acceptance, the mood in the room relaxed quite a bit. Jorge padded over to Boyd's side as Tayla kicked a chair underneath the table; it clattered and tilted and almost fell over before Jorge reached out to balance it.

"Sit down," Tayla ordered lazily. Boyd reached for the chair Jorge had caught while Jorge looked between the three of them. Tayla nodded her head toward the door. "Be the look out, would you?"

Jorge didn't look away from her but somehow Boyd felt like he wanted to glance over. Instead, Jorge just nodded and disappeared out the door, shutting it behind him. The room seemed especially quiet when he left, despite the fact that Jorge hadn't actually said a word since they'd entered. Tayla kicked her feet out noisily in front of herself and studied Boyd for a moment while he watched them. Liani smiled at him in a small, quiet sort of way, then reached down into what appeared to be a bag sitting on the ground next to her. Boyd dropped into the offered chair and waited for them to do something.

Tayla broke the silence by pulling a wrinkled piece of paper out of one of the many pockets on her pants; she then stuck the edge in her mouth while she dug through her pockets for something else. "Reed, right?" she asked, her voice muffled.

Boyd nodded. "Yeah."

Tayla tilted her head in acknowledgment while Liani slid a relatively small black case across the table.

"Here is your answer," Liani said with a pleasant smile. "There are two transmitters in here and two receivers or trackers, whatever you wish to call them. The transmitters are the same but the receivers, though both shaped as watches, are two different styles to make it less obvious that they are related to each other." Liani looked at him curiously. "Are you familiar with GPS?"

"I've used similar stuff before, yeah," Boyd said with a nod. "What's the range?"

"This is low-functioning," Tayla said from the side, noisily unfolding the paper and plunking a pen down on the table, which was apparently what she had been searching for. She quirked her pierced eyebrow. "Depends on the weather and your location— the ionosphere, troposphere, your altitude, all that — and the battery power of your receiver. The watch has an internal lithium-ion battery but the life is maybe ten, twelve hours. You should keep a spare if you have to use it a lot and somehow you seem the type. In a best case scenario, you'd have it narrowed to a city block or two. That's sweet-as considering the size and price."

Boyd didn't know what 'sweet-as' meant but he assumed it was something good. He didn't have the chance to ask before Liani smoothly continued from Tayla's words.

"The receivers and transmitters are civilian-grade but dual frequency," Liani added in a calm, almost gentle tone. Now that she'd seemed to accept him, her gaze was no longer scrutinizing. "They are relatively reliable but it is possible for a fake signal to interfere with yours. It was made this way so it would not be tracked by the military satellites or code; several governments have been planning a way to access the data of the location of all military-grade GPS receivers or transmitters. These will not be tracked that way because they are using civilian code and I am not aware of any government that cares enough about the location of its civilians to track that."