Frozen: Heart of Dread, Book One (18 page)

A
VO LAUGHED AGAIN. “TELL HER, WHY
don’t you? About how Bradley offered you good work, easy enough, hunting down pilgrims in the black waters. Cleaning up the ocean of trash. Lucky for us, you didn’t take it. Looks like you decided to join them instead.”

Wes sighed. This wasn’t going as he’d hoped.

The second slave ship pulled up next to
Alby.
This one was similar to the first, with a long line of cargo containers dangling like cages from the edges of the deck. Its captain, a lean, bald, and surly-looking pirate, boarded the ship. His skin was pale and jaundiced, unlike the scavengers of old with their nut-brown sunburned faces. But the sun’s rays did not reach the ocean anymore; it was as gray out here as it was anywhere else in the world, and so the slavers were as pale as any citizen of New Vegas. Like Avo, Wes noticed, the new guy was carrying a military locator on his hip.

The bald slaver was known as the Ear, Wes remembered now. Called that because he was missing his right one. His ship was the
Van Gogh.
“This is all we got?” he asked, looking contemptuously at Wes’s scraggly crew.

“Looks like.” Avo nodded. “The boys checked it out. A lifeboat’s gone, but that’s all. They lost a couple along the way, Wesson said.”

The Ear spat on the deck. It was clear he didn’t think much of the ship. Wes noticed burn marks on his jacket and wondered whether the slaver had taken them from his earlier fight with Avo.

“Toss for it?” Avo asked, throwing a silver coin in the air.

“Heads,” the Ear called.

“Tails,” Avo showed him the back of the coin. He smiled and pointed right at Nat. “That one.”

“No! Don’t hurt her!” Wes yelled. “Avo, I swear to god if you—”

“Wait—wait—” Nat said, as Avo removed a blade from his back pocket and walked toward her. She cringed from his touch.

“Relax . . . ,” the slaver said, pulling up her sleeve. He marked the skin on her hand with a crooked
S.

Wes struggled against the men holding him. “I need to warn you . . . she’s marked!”

The slaver grinned. “Exactly. Marked but still healthy. Which is why I want her—she’ll fetch a higher price at the markets. Vardick, take her to the
Titan.
” He nodded to one of the mercenaries, who grabbed Nat by her cut hand.

“Wes—!” she cried.

“Nat! Don’t fight them—don’t—”

But Nat kicked at Vardick, and in turn he knocked her on the side of her head with the butt of his rifle, and she went down hard on the deck.

“Don’t mess up her face,” Avo said, annoyed. “They don’t like when they’re too beat-up looking.”

Wes broke away from the grip of the pirates holding him and spun around, burying his fist in the nearest slaver’s gut, breaking his ribs and sending him to the ground. The slavers had a lot of brute force, but none of them really knew how to fight. The man was twice Wes’s size, but he’d hardly had a chance to move before Wes struck him. His military training proved handy in moments like this, and right now, with slavers on all sides, he’d take on the whole crew if he had to.

“Enough of that,” Avo said, languidly raising his pistol. “Or I’ll make you watch what they do to her.”

Wes froze and surrendered. The pirate he’d defeated kicked him in the back and he fell to the deck.

“Next,” the Ear said, “I’ll take Vibrate over here.”

Liannan shot Shakes a worried glance as the Ear’s men took him to their side. Shakes didn’t make a sound as they nicked his ear with a cut. Blood dripped from the wound.

Avo studied the rest of the group. “I’ll take the sylph,” he said finally. “Maybe Jolly’ll want her for his collection.”

Liannan kept her hands behind her back. She didn’t want to carry their brand. But it was useless, as a pair of Avo’s men tag-teamed her, forced her hand open, and carved it.

“The smallkind.” The Ear pointed. “I’ll take them both, two for the price of one, eh?”

Like Shakes, Roark and Brendon did not cry or scream when their ears were cut. Wes was proud of his crew. He only hoped he had an idea to get them out of this. He hadn’t lied to Nat, but the situation looked more dire than he’d thought. He had counted on all of them being on the same ship. But now that they were being split between two . . . it would be harder to rescue them all.

“What are you doing with the little ones?” Avo asked, curious.

“Outlaw territories—circus will pay a lot for ’em.”

“I’ll take Wesson here,” Avo said languidly.

Wes kept a smile on his face as the pirate slashed his hand. “You’ll regret this, Slob. I promise you. Remember that. Warn Jolly, too. I’ll come for him when I come for you.”

They were brave, empty words, he knew, but he hoped it would give his people courage. And he was glad that at the very least Nat was with him.

“Vincent!” Liannan screamed, as the two groups were dragged to their respective ships.

But Shakes didn’t even look up. He had already given up, Wes thought, and maybe so should he.

T
HE BACK END OF THE
TITAN
served as
a village for the captives, with cargo containers arranged in a horseshoe along the perimeter of the deck. The containers were mounted so that half of the box was sitting on the deck and other half was hanging over the water. The arrangement allowed for more space on the deck, but Wes guessed the scavengers weren’t after efficiency. Left to hang in the cold ocean air, the cages would be doubly cold and any attempt at escape would likely land you in the black waters.

The only way in or out was through a heavy iron door locked by a bolt as big around as Wes’s arm. There was a jagged hole in the middle of it, enough to let in some light. A gray-skinned scavenger pressed the point of his blade to Wes’s back as he pointed to a cage’s open door, and Wes walked in, Nat right behind. Through holes in the steel floor, they could see the dark ocean waters rushing below them. The loud rush of moving water echoed inside the box, making the two of them shiver. The cage felt ten degrees cooler than the ship’s deck.

Hanging above the water, there was nothing to insulate them from the freezing ocean.

Wes smelled ripe fruit and nuts, and for a moment he forgot the cold as he looked around for food. But the cargo box was empty. He wondered whether there was something outside their door, but he saw nothing. He thought for a second that the cold was starting to play tricks on his mind. He panicked, then realized what he was smelling. In faded orange letters he caught sight of the NU-Foods logo on one of the walls. The company specialized in “New Foods for You”—food that didn’t require refrigeration or cooking. You simply stored them in a cupboard and used them as needed. The foods were guaranteed fresh and bacteria-free for decades.
Stock up for a century!
—or something like that. He’d forgotten the tagline. Immortal food. The smell of NU-Foods remained strong. The smell would be here when the world ended. It was the cockroach of foods—indestructible even in its grossness.

Wes laughed and so did Nat. They were about to starve, smelling nothing but processed food products.

Her smile faded quickly. He could tell she had something on her mind. “Is it true? What the Slob said?” Nat asked. “About the job?”

Wes sighed. “Yeah. It’s true. I was offered the same job he’s doing.” He told Nat about the mission he’d turned down.
This isn’t work, it’s murder,
he’d told Bradley. “The RSA uses slavers to kill or torture its own citizens. They didn’t care what I did with the pilgrims—as long as I made them disappear. If the Blue is real, they don’t want anyone else finding it.”

“You must have quite a reputation,” Nat said thoughtfully.

“Yeah, well, I turned them down, didn’t I? This is all my fault; I shouldn’t have let you leave New Vegas.”

“It was my choice,” she said. “It’s not your fault.”

“It is exactly my fault, but I’m hoping Avo will listen to me. We have history together. He’ll hear me out, at least. He’s had his fun and his revenge; he’s won already. I’m in a cage.”

“You and Avo—you have the same scar on your right eyebrow. But you said Shakes hit you with a pickax. That it was an accident.”

Wes grimaced, looking uncomfortable. “I’ll tell you sometime.”

“He was in the service with you, wasn’t he? Avo Hubik. They said he’s from New Thrace, but he can’t be, he doesn’t have an accent. I wondered about that when I won
Alby.
By the way, I always thought ‘
Alby
’ was short for ALB-187, but Avo called it the
Albatross.
”

“It’s an old joke between us, that that ship’s more of a burden than anything. You’re right, he’s not from Thrace; he’s ex-army—we served in the same unit,” Wes said. “Now he’s a mercenary, just like me.”

“What happens if you aren’t able to persuade him to show us some mercy just because of the good old days?”

Wes sat. “Well, if I know Avo, one of these days he’s going to get distracted, or lazy, and I can bust us out, get all of us the hell out of here.”

“And if that doesn’t work? We’ll be auctioned off as slaves, right? I mean if we’re lucky, that’s what’ll happen. Because if no one wants us, they’re going to sell us to the flesh markets, won’t they? The outlaw territories are starving. And they’ll take any kind of meat.” She shuddered. She’d heard the dark rumors about the flesh trade—first they blinded the slaves with acid, then skinned them alive before butchering them for parts.

“It’s not going to come to that, Nat. I won’t let it. Remember our pact?”

Nat didn’t answer. “But why did he say I’d fetch a higher price . . . What do they do with the marked?”

“I don’t know.” Wes wouldn’t meet her eye.

“You do, you just don’t want to tell me.” Nat felt her stomach twist. Wes was trying to hold it together, but she saw the fear in his eyes that he was trying hard to hide, and she remembered how young he was then. How young they all were. He was the best at pretending. He kept his cool, made them believe he was older and in control. But he was only sixteen. He was still just a boy. All of them children and orphans. Slob was the worst of them, Nat realized, the meanest bully on the playground.

The cold seemed to nip at them from all directions. There were no distractions, nothing to see or do. The days and nights were unnaturally long, and always, there was the arctic wind, burning like a fire that offered no heat.

• • •

For the next several days they were kept in the cage with nothing to eat, nothing to drink but melted icicles that formed around the corners. Nat felt fine at first, but on the third day she felt too dizzy to even sit up. She was claustrophobic in the cage, drained of energy, hungrier than she’d ever been. She tried to sleep, but her body shook every time the wind whistled through the bullet holes. The frigid air would sweep across her skin, waking her from her sleep as it robbed her reddened cheeks of their last drops of moisture.

Nat heard a tearing sound and she thought for a moment that the crate was about to fall to the water below. She looked up and saw Wes ripping a long strip of fabric from the liner of his vest.

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t answer; he just kept tearing another long strip from his clothes.

“You’re going to freeze! Stop it!”

“Here,” he said, handing her the longer one. “Eat it.”

“What is it?” she asked, too weak to reach for it.

“It’s Bacon Fruit. Tastes like fruit, looks like bacon. The military rolls them into these polyiso tubes. Poly’s basically the stuff they use to make home insulation. The liner keeps the dried fruit fresh for years. Shakes and I discovered it makes for cheap personal insulation just as easily, so we stuffed our jackets with them.” She watched as Wes reached inside the lining of his vest and tore a long strip of fabric from inside it.

“I was trying to save it until we really needed it. Looks like that day has come. I never actually thought I’d end up eating the stuff.” He took a bite and smiled. “Tastes worse than it looks.”

He was wrong. Nat thought it was the most delicious lining she had ever eaten. The hunger faded for a moment as she chewed.

• • •

In the morning, the guard pushed tin cups of gruel and water through the hole in the door. Along with the Bacon Fruit, it was enough to keep them from starving to death, but that was all.

Still, every time the door banged, Nat was sure it was Slob; she hadn’t liked the way he had looked at her—she could almost see the watts in his eyes. But as the days passed and nothing happened, Nat began to think that maybe he had forgotten about her, or that maybe Wes had been able to talk him out of selling her for now.

What did they do with the marked? Why did they fetch a higher price at the markets?

Nat could hear Liannan in the storage container next door, which meant that the sylph was still alive. But what about Shakes and the smallmen? She wondered how they were faring, and prayed that they were still alive.

She fell asleep on Wes’s shoulder, when she heard a soft voice call her name in the darkness.

“Nat? Nat? Can you hear me?”

“Liannan!” Nat said.

“I can’t talk long, the iron is too strong, but I can project my voice a little. I’m scared, Nat.”

“Don’t be. Wes will get us out of here. He will, I know he will.”

“It’s all this iron,” Liannan said softly. “If only there was a way to get out of this cage.”

“Maybe there is,” Wes said, piping up, “if I know these guys. By tomorrow they’ll be bored and they might let us out of here. Which is good and bad.”

“Bad how?”

“Because when slavers are bored, they make the slaves put on a show.”

W
ES WAS RIGHT. A FEW DAYS LATER THE
slavers let them out into the open. Nat was glad to feel some warmth on her face, glad to be out of that small container. Her eyes had not seen daylight in nearly a week. Though the sky was its usual foggy gray, it burned for a moment like an ancient summer sun when they opened the cage.

The pirates singled out the marked prisoners. Nat was separated from Wes and made to stand with the others in the middle of a circle. The slavers kept iron spears, crudely forged from scrap metal, pointed at their backs in case the prisoners attempted to use their powers against them, although there was little chance of that happening, as the hunger and despair had sapped every ounce of hope from the captives’ spirits. They performed as dutifully as trained monkeys.

Nat watched as fellow marked slaves levitated boxes, made the sails ripple, and knocked glasses around the deck.

“This is what they’re for, right? Stupid parlor tricks,” sneered a crew member holding an iron spear.

“You there—do one,” another said, pointing to Nat. For a moment she was caught off guard. “Me?” she mumbled, and the slaver nodded, his mouth opening to reveal jagged set of yellowed teeth.

She didn’t move. He poked the sharpened piece of metal at her, and Nat shivered. Her mind was empty. She felt less than human and knew immediately that was the slavers’ intent.

“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t do anything.”

The slaver’s jagged smile disappeared. He narrowed his eyes, his face contorted horribly. He made to bash her with the stick, and Nat cowered, ready for the blow, but none came.

She looked up to see the slaver turning red, his collar contracting around his neck, choking him.

She looked around—and a fellow marked prisoner was staring at the slaver with a focused anger.

The slaver began to sputter as the fabric continued to tighten, cutting off the blood. The man fell backward, his head crashing on the hard metal deck.

The slavers laughed at their fallen comrade. A second pirate—tall, burly, and stripped to the waist to show off his ugly tattoos—kicked the downed brute aside. “You’ve got to take charge of these animals!” he snarled. “If you give them half a chance they’ll toss you in the ocean. Go belowdecks and make yourself useful.” He walked past the row of marked prisoners. “It’s my turn to have some fun.”

“You like to play, huh?” he asked, pointing to the young boy who had choked his comrade. He gestured to a row of cages. “Hold those up for me!”

The boy seemed uncertain what to do next.

“DO IT! OR I’LL STICK THIS THROUGH YOUR ROTTING NECK!”

The marked slave closed his eyes. He had a dotted patch of raised skin on his temple, the most common mark, which meant he had the power of telekinesis—he could move things with his mind. Slowly, ever so slowly, the row of cargo containers rose from the ground. They floated a few inches, then a foot, then three feet, but the effort was too much and the slave collapsed on the ground, along with the cages, crashing on the deck.

“OY! WAKE UP!” the pirate yelled, kicking at him.

“He’s dead. You killed another one. Slob will be pissed. Traders are coming. You know they pay more for the marked ones.”

“What they want with ice trash is beyond me. In a month they’ll all be thrillers.”

“Besides, he’s not dead,” the other one said, throwing a bucket of black water on the poor boy’s face. “But I’m sure he wishes he was.”

• • •

They were marched back to their cages, Nat too weak and too scared to talk, even as Wes tried to console her by rubbing her back. So that was what Avo wanted the marked for—to use them for amusement—for
sport
until they could sell them
.
The slavers would toy with them, a form of torture, like pulling wings from a fly, until they were sold.

That night Nat heard a faint fluttering sound outside her cage.

“What is it?” she asked Wes, who moved toward the door, looking through the tiny hole.

“Don’t worry, it’s not the guards,” he said. “Look.”

Nat peered through the slit. A flock of multicolored creatures surrounded their cage—they looked like large butterflies or birds, but were not either—they were flitting and flying, as their marvelous blue, pink, purple, gold, and silver feathers lit the night like a rainbow.

“Can you hear them?” Liannan asked, her melodious voice echoing through the darkness.

“Yes—I can—I can even understand what they’re saying!” said Nat in wonder.

“What are they saying?” Wes wanted to know.

Nat tried to explain—it wasn’t so much that she could hear them speak words or sentences, it was that she was filled with their emotion, their spirit.

“They’re saying . . . they’re saying . . . there’s hope. There’s hope for us. Hope and welcome.”

There was a noise from the food slot. Nat cried out in surprise as small nuts, seeds, and fruit began to fall through the hole. She took Wes’s handkerchief to catch them.

Hope,
she thought.
We will survive this.

Thank you,
she sent to the birds.
Thank you. Please, we are not the only ones here. Bring food to all.

They ate their meal, and Nat could hear cries of delight murmuring through the slave quarters.

Nat picked several berries and shared them with Wes, their lips turning red from the juice.

Afterward, Nat found she still had her deck of cards that she always kept in her pocket, and they played card games, using seeds as chips. “Fold,” Wes said disgustedly as he threw his cards down. “Where did you learn how to play?”

“It’s one of the first things they teach us at MacArthur. How to play cards. They size up our abilities that way. See who can use their powers to predict things, read minds, stuff like that,” Nat said, shuffling the cards and dealing the next hand.

“So that’s how you win,” he said with a wry grin. “Not fair.”

She looked at him and shook her head. “Not at all. I can’t do anything like that, I’m just good at it,” she said, a little annoyed. “Is that so hard to believe?”

Wes grunted. He assessed his hand. “Fold!”

She laughed.

He pushed a cup of seeds her way and she knew he would have given them to her anyway. “So, card sharking is just part of the training?” he asked.

“We move on from the poker table to number games, patterns . . . like the one at the fence.” She picked up a card from the stack. “What about you? You never told me how you ended up a mercenary or why you left the military. I know you said you didn’t want to go career, but still, wasn’t it easier being a soldier than having to do this sort of thing? I mean, look where we are.”

“Truthfully, being a hired gun is a more honest life than one in the military,” Wes said, as he studied his hand.

“How’s that?” she asked, putting a pair of cards facedown on the floor.

“You were never in the service—so you don’t know half the things they ask us to do, in Lower Pangaea, New Rhodes, Olympia. It’s their way of guaranteeing the soldiers’ loyalty. They make us all complicit in their crimes. Once you’ve done it, you don’t think twice about saying yes the next time, since you’ve already crossed the line.” He discarded a few cards, picked up two more.

She was silent for a moment. “Is that what happened . . . in Texas?”

He brooded on that. “Yeah.” He didn’t look her in the eye. “The rebels wouldn’t surrender, we had them cornered, but they wouldn’t wave the white flag. The town was empty; no one knew where the Texans were hiding their people. I found out by accident. I got caught on a run, hauled in, and tortured. That’s how I got this scar. Avo too. But we didn’t break. They thought we were dead. We managed to escape, and we even caught one of their people . . . he was marked . . .” Wes sucked in his breath.

“You don’t have to tell the story if it’s too hard.”

“I didn’t want to do it, I wanted no part of it . . . but I couldn’t stop him either. Avo, he . . .” Wes looked agonized.

“He tortured him.”

“Yeah.” He closed his eyes. “He had a mark on his cheek, a brand . . . like a serpent. Avo figured out he could . . . he could . . .”

“Hurt him by touching it,” Nat said softly.

“Yeah.”

“He would push on it, and it would glow . . . and the guy just kept screaming . . . and finally, he broke. The Texans were hiding their people a few miles inland. Hidden in the snow. They’d moved them into one of those old arenas. I thought we’d surround them, you know, like a siege. But the orders came. Bomb the entire place. Kill their kids, their wives, everyone. Get them to surrender.”

“It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do it. You didn’t torture him and you didn’t give the order.”

“But I couldn’t stop him either. Their blood is on my hands and I’ll never be able to wash it off.” He took a shaky breath. “I left the service after that . . . I didn’t want to be any part of that . . .”

“Wes—you’re not a bad person,” she said, putting her cards down, the game forgotten.

Wes did the same. He shook his head. “It was war—but it wasn’t right. We were no better than the slavers. Worse, maybe.”