Revolution (Replica) (20 page)

“Remember who’s paying for your upkeep,” Angel snapped. “And I’m not exactly doing a lot of business these days, so I might have to cut back on my spending.”

“We’re on the same side,” Nadia reminded the two of them. “We both want Dorothy stopped, and we both want out from under the ‘austerity measures’ and blockades. Let’s not waste time fighting each other.”

Angel flashed her teeth in something vaguely resembling a grin. “Honey, I’m trying to organize a resistance out of a bunch of junkies, whores, and gangbangers. They’re not the most cooperative bunch.”

Nadia shrugged, unimpressed. “Doesn’t mean you have to pick fights.”

“Whatever,” Angel mumbled, then turned to Shrimp and acted like the two of them were alone in the room. “So, I was trying to see Maiden ’cause we sure could use some more warm bodies out in the free territories.”

Angel launched into a surprisingly eloquent—and obviously well-practiced—appeal for the people of the Basement to band together to put an end to the tyranny. Thanks to her activities in the resistance, she had a core of devoted followers who were more than ready to take up arms against the state, but now that the resistance was no longer underground—and the Basement was under siege—she was eager to add to her ranks.

“I know Maiden doesn’t want to get involved,” she said. “Hell, practically no one in Debasement wants to lift a finger to help anyone unless there’s something in it for them. So I’d basically like to ‘rent’ some of his enforcers to help with a little action I’m planning. Hard to bring him my offer, though, when he refuses to see me, so I thought I’d bring it to you. Maybe you can let him know it’d be worth his while.”

Funny how she’d suggested paying the Red Death to shelter Nate and Nadia was causing her some kind of financial hardship when she’d come with an offer to throw more money at Maiden.

“He won’t go for it,” Shrimp said.

Angel arched her eyebrows. “He’d turn down money?”

Shrimp’s expression turned uncharacteristically cold and hard. “How many people do you expect are gonna survive this ‘little action’ you’re planning?”

Angel’s eyes narrowed. “They aren’t using rubber bullets out there anymore, so yeah, some people aren’t gonna make it back. That’s kinda how these things go.”

“You mean
a lot
of people won’t make it back,” Shrimp countered. “You’re going up against tanks with a bunch of, as you put it, junkies, whores, and gangbangers armed with whatever guns they happen to get their hands on.”

“I have a plan for the tanks,” Angel said vaguely. “Look, it’ll be dangerous, but—”

Shrimp cut her off with a sharp hand gesture. “I’ll tell Maiden you want to talk. And I’ll tell him you have an offer. But he’s hoping we’ll be able to make a land grab when the smoke clears, and we’ll need as many enforcers as we can get for that. If he’s willing to give you any people at all, he’ll be scraping from the bottom of the barrel, not giving you able-bodied enforcers.”

Nadia felt a now-familiar surge of righteous indignation, but though Angel had just minutes ago been giving the hard sell, she nodded in weary acceptance. Maiden was probably not the first gang lord she’d approached, and it was likely she’d gotten similar responses.

“Well,” Dante said, standing up, “I’m just one person, but I’m able-bodied, and I’m sick of sitting on the sidelines. Whatever you’re planning, count me in.”

Nadia choked on a cry of protest, her heart suddenly leaping into her throat. She wanted to do everything she could to help the resistance, but that didn’t include putting Dante in front of a line of tanks.

“Me, too,” Bishop said.

Nate stood up, and from the look on his face, Nadia guessed he was going to volunteer as well, but both Shrimp and Angel piped in with refusals before he could even speak.

“You made it clear when you met Maiden that you knew stuff that could turn the heat on Red Death,” Shrimp said. “No way he’s gonna risk any of you getting captured and spilling your guts.”

“And I wouldn’t take you anyway,” Angel finished. “Thanks to the damned blimp, you two are known associates of our Executive friends here. They’re more likely to lynch you than work with you.”

Guilty relief flooded Nadia, and she suspected Nate felt much the same way. Bishop and Dante would not be facing down tanks. Instead, they would remain trapped in the red tower, powerless to do anything, while others lost their lives in what would doubtless be futile heroics.

“I’ll take the offer to Maiden,” Shrimp said again. “I know y’all are right and sitting on the sidelines ain’t a good idea. I just wish I knew how to convince Maiden of that.”

*   *   *

Shrimp
spent about three hours up in Maiden’s apartment, and the only thing he had to show for it when he returned was a black eye. Apparently, he’d gotten a bit impassioned in his plea, and Maiden hadn’t appreciated it.

“He ain’t gonna budge,” Shrimp announced to no one in particular. Angel had left long ago.

“So that’s it?” Nate challenged, glaring. “We’re just going to sit here and do nothing until the tanks are rolling down the streets in front of us and Thea collects as many human lab rats as she’d like while the rest of the Basement-dwellers are gunned down or starve to death?” He was frustrated enough that he wanted to hit something, maybe throw some furniture around.

“We can’t do that,” Agnes said with quiet dignity. “If we do nothing, Dorothy’s eventually going to find us and kill us. If we’re going to die anyway, I’d rather at least be
trying
to stop her. Angel might not particularly want to work with us, but she said she needed warm bodies. We’re warm bodies.”

“No!” Shrimp said sharply.

Agnes looked up at him with a serene expression very much at odds with what she was proposing. “We’ll ‘sneak’ out sometime when you’re on your rounds. As long as you’re not here, Maiden won’t expect you to stop us, right? So you shouldn’t get in trouble or anything.”

Shrimp gaped at her. “You think
that’s
why I’m saying no?”

Nate didn’t much like the idea of the five of them joining up with a bunch of Basement-dwellers who hated them in order to throw themselves against Dorothy’s tanks, but maybe that was the best possible outcome for all of them. Agnes was right: there was a certain dignity to going down fighting. A hell of a lot more dignity than there was in dying while in hiding.

“There are five of us, and one of you,” Nate said, although technically he couldn’t be sure Nadia, Kurt, and Dante were on board. “If we’re determined to leave, you can’t stop us.”

Shrimp’s eyes glittered in the glow of the candles. “Tell me you didn’t just threaten me.”

Kurt came to stand shoulder to shoulder with Nate, and Dante joined him. Nate wasn’t much of a fighter, but Kurt and Dante were both formidable. Between the three of them, they could take Shrimp down no matter how scrappy he might be.

“I know you understand better than you’re letting on,” Agnes said to Shrimp with a sad little smile. “Just go on out and do your thing, and we’ll be gone when you get back.”

“You’d never make it out of Red Death territory,” Shrimp responded. “Too many enforcers out there keeping an eye on things. And Angel’s blaze of glory crap ain’t gonna do anyone any good.”

“That doesn’t m—”

“Yes, it does matter!” Shrimp growled. “If y’all have to be heroes and get yourselves killed, you might as well do it for something that has a chance of working.”

Agnes cocked her head. “What do you have in mind?”

“I’ll tell you as soon as you get your boys to sit down and shut up.”

Agnes smiled pleasantly. “I’m sure that can be arranged,” she said in a saccharine-sweet voice. “Isn’t that right, boys?” She gave Nate, Kurt, and Dante each a pointed look.

Nate had never been a big fan of doing as he was told—or of backing down once he’d taken a stance—but just this once, he would make an exception. If Shrimp had an idea about how they could fight Dorothy without making a suicidal charge against the barricades, he was more than eager to hear it.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Shrimp
remained on his feet while everyone else sat down and looked up at him expectantly. His shoulders were tight with strain, his eyes a little wild-looking. Whatever he was about to suggest, Nadia didn’t think he was exactly comfortable with it.

“Lookin’ at what’s going on now,” he said, rubbing his hands together in a nervous gesture, “I don’t see any way it’s gonna end well. Even if Maiden gave the okay for all of us to join up with Angel, we’re gonna get our asses kicked. And it don’t seem to me that Dorothy’s gonna back off anytime soon.”

“She won’t,” Nate agreed. “At least not until she’s sure that we are dead.”

“And anyone she thinks we might have talked to,” Nadia hastily added. The last thing she wanted to do was give Maiden any reason to think killing them and turning their bodies over to the authorities for the reward might be a good idea.

Shrimp waved off her obvious concern. “Don’t worry. My brother can be a dickhead, but he ain’t stupid. If he’d understood the level of heat you’d put on us, Angel couldn’t’ve paid him enough to shelter you. But he’s stuck with you now, and he knows it.

“Anyway, like I was saying, Dorothy ain’t gonna stop on her own, and a bunch of Basement-dwellers with guns ain’t enough to stop her. So I think Agnes was right all along, and the only way to take her down is with help from the outside.”

Agnes’s face lit with hope. “So you’ll let me use Maiden’s phone connection?”

Shrimp shook his head. “No way. The only access is in his place, and he ain’t gonna let us in to use it.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Agnes asked.

“You wanted to get outside of the Basement, where you could pick up a signal. I think I might know how we can do that.”

“And you’re willing to do it behind Maiden’s back?”

He scrubbed at his bristly orange hair. “I don’t see that we got a choice. I don’t wanna end up like Kitty, but I don’t wanna hold my breath and hope the monster’ll go away, either. If Maiden won’t listen, then we gotta go behind his back.”

“But you could just let us go behind his back without you,” Nadia suggested. “Tell us what you have in mind, and if it sounds like a good plan, we’ll go ahead with our ‘escape’ and take care of it ourselves. You don’t have to put yourself in the line of fire.”

“Thanks,” he said, with a sad little smile, “but if you pull this off, Maiden’ll know it came from me anyway. So I might as well go with you. And hope that a showdown with Maiden is the worst thing in my future.”

“So how do you propose we get out of the Basement and in range of a phone signal?” Agnes asked.

“A coupla blocks from here, there’s some kinda sinkhole. When they built the Basement, they built around it instead of fixing it, so it’s kinda like a wasteland.”

Nadia remembered when she and Nate had been brought to the Basement to meet with Bishop when he was first in hiding. They’d met at an abandoned overpass. Not familiar with the Basement at the time, Nadia hadn’t realized how unusual it was to have so much empty space with no high-rises on it.

“Is it near that overpass where we met with Bishop?” she asked, then belatedly realized Shrimp might have no idea what she was talking about.

“Yep,” he said, grinning. “I was there that night, you know. Keeping an eye on our boy here.” He gave Bishop a friendly punch in the arm. “It’s just on the other side of the overpass where y’all had your little reunion. Anyway, I used to play there when I was a kid, and I found a hole in the rubble. Couldn’t see much ’cause it was dark down there, but went back one night with Maiden. Turns out it’s an old subway tunnel, probably collapsed when they were tearing down the neighborhood to build the Basement.

“We never explored it too much—it’s really nasty down there, and we weren’t sure how stable it was—but we hid the opening just in case we ever needed a place to hide where no one could find us. I don’t know how far it goes, and I don’t know if the air’s any good or even if there’s any way out, but it might be worth taking a look.”

“It’s perfect!” Agnes declared, her face lighting up with hope.

Nadia wouldn’t go that far. It had been patently obvious to those who had planned the Basement that public transportation would not be needed there. Basement-dwellers would have no reason to venture out into the wider world—at least that was the theory—and respectable citizens would know better than to set foot into the dangers of the slums. Nadia knew from her history lessons that there had once been subway lines running through the neighborhood, before it was torn down and made into the Basement. But just because Shrimp had found access to a stretch of tunnel didn’t mean the system was navigable, especially not when they would have to travel so far to get past the barricade and get a signal. The idea of blundering around in a dark, dank, stinky tunnel system with questionable air wasn’t terribly appealing.

Shrimp shrugged. “I wouldn’t get my hopes up yet, but at least there’s a shot.”

“Power’s been out what, two weeks now?” Bishop said. “Anyone’s phone still have juice?”

That threw a wet blanket over everything. Getting under the barricades wouldn’t help if they couldn’t make the phone call.

No one was carrying their useless phones around anymore, so they took a few minutes to gather all the ones they had and dump them onto the coffee table. Several were already dead, but a few had a small amount of battery power left.

“We take all the ones that have any power at all,” Shrimp said, “and we might have to make multiple calls to get the message out.”

Nadia bit her lip. “And we have to go soon—before the last phone dies.” She’d been thinking they could maybe take a couple of days to plan for the terrifying venture into the tunnels, and that she and Nate and Agnes would be able to rehearse what they were going to say to Chairman Belinski in order to get as much information out as fast as possible—without making him think they were lunatics.

“Probably a good idea anyway,” Nate said. “We don’t know how long Dorothy will hold off before she launches a full-scale attack. And if we give Angel time to launch her ‘little action,’ that could be just the excuse Dorothy needs to send the tanks in. If we’re going to do this, we have to do it, like, now.”