The Indigo Thief (16 page)

Dove leapt back into our copter as we shot out over the ocean. “The copilot had a monarch tattooed on her neck,” he said with a smile.

Bertha’s eyes widened. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

The three of us looked to Phoenix for further instruction.

“We need to direct ourselves toward the water as we fall,” he explained. “Dove’s given us the time we need—now we just need to aim ourselves west to avoid the city. If we’re lucky, we’ll hit water and catch a current that’ll take us to the sewers. From there, we can go to Madam Revleon’s and wait this whole thing out until things settle down.”

“And if we’re
not
lucky?” I asked.

“We die,” said Phoenix.

“At least we have options!” said Dove gleefully.

Phoenix glanced out the window. “We have enough altitude now to have a shot at making it to the coastline.” He pointed to the tattered steel cord still stuck to the winch. “We’ll use this to stay together until we’re ready to pull our chutes. That way we don’t drift apart. We jump as a team.”

Our copter was still darting forward, and we were in cloud cover now. The four of us suited up, with Phoenix strapping Mila to his chest and Bertha strapping Mila’s string of stolen guns—plus a few guns of her own—to herself.

Phoenix secured the cord to our waists. “On my countdown,” he said. “THREE, TWO, ONE!”

We leapt from the copter. Clouds raced by my face as we fell. We were in a line now— held together only by the cord Phoenix insisted we use.

Newla’s edge loomed beneath us. We were lucky it’d been built so close to the ocean years ago. The chancellor at the time must have wanted a view.

As we fell, Mila’s eyes finally flew open. A look of fear flashed in them before she promptly passed out again. Bertha rolled her eyes so loudly I could practically hear her muttering,
Sissy
.

We plummeted through the cloud cover and past the remaining Federal copters. We fell so quickly, we probably didn’t even hit their radar. I hoped.

But we weren’t so lucky. One of the Federal copters plunged downward, and two dots launched themselves from the metal body of it as it fell—pilots abandoning ship, coming after us. The chase was far from over, I realized. I tried to tell the others, but the words caught in my throat as the air rushed by—we were falling far too fast.

Phoenix and the others angled their bodies to steer us over open water. At last, Phoenix nodded and put a hand to his mouth—the signal he was about to cut the cord. We prepared ourselves to open our chutes. He sliced the cord several times with his laser pen, and we pushed ourselves apart in the sky.

The plan was for Phoenix to pull his chute first, as Mila’s weight would cause them both to drop faster, so they’d need the extra time. His aim was also best—he was the only one with a reasonable chance of landing where he wanted, and thus if he came down last, he could join up with those who had already landed.

He yanked his cord, flying back into the sky above us as his chute—created using a special cloth invented by Bertha to be invisible to the untrained eye—caught air. Dove went next, and then it was Bertha’s turn.

She yanked her cord.

And yanked her cord.

Her chute was dead.

She was still plummeting toward the water. I swam toward her in the sky, a drunken frog in the air. She wrapped her arms around my chest.

“Just pull the damn chute,” she muttered.

There’d be a time for gloating, I was sure.

I pulled my cord, and my neck jerked back. My shoulder screamed where it had been stabbed by Churchill’s hook, and whiplash knocked me forward.

We floated in a pocket of air caught by my parachute. Not falling, just floating. Held by the breeze’s warm floating hands.

Gunshots sounded overhead. A round whizzed down past my ear, and my parachute hissed—shot. My heart pounded with fear and my limbs tightened from shock. Bertha slipped out of my arms, and dropped toward the ocean like a rock.

Air pressed through the bullet holes in the parachute, driving its ruthless tendrils through and stretching the holes wide. In seconds, the chute’s fabric was completely torn to shreds.

I was free-falling now. Fast and hard.

Like our copter, like Bertha, like Club 49, I plunged from the sky.

Miranda could still remember the night Hackner was elected to the council and appointed chancellor. She always remembered the appointment nights.

He’d been forty-five—the traditional age of one’s election to the Council. He would serve his five-year term, like the other council members, then receive his euthanization at its completion. There were no re-elections. The dead couldn’t run.

His had been a particularly boring election season, Miranda remembered. He’d won his island’s seat in a landslide victory by charming the hearts of the people of Newla, the city that carried most of HQ’s vote due to its massive population.

It’d come easily to him, too—he was a natural manipulator. The press sat like puppies in the palm of his hand, their pens scribbling, tails wagging, eager—always eager—to please. He was handsome, charming, persuasive, and—most importantly to Miranda—stupid.

It took the other council members two whole minutes of deliberation to select him, among themselves, as the next chancellor. It would’ve happened even faster, but Councilman Birch was struck by a coughing fit that lasted nearly a minute.

Of course, the deliberation was merely a formality. In the history of the Federation, there’d never been a single chancellor appointed from any island other than HQ. Sure, several fools had tried over the years, but the zealous bastards always disappeared or died mysteriously during the deliberation—and in the end, HQ’s councilman reigned supreme once again.

Miranda remembered watching Hackner enter the chancellor’s chambers for the first time, the night he’d been appointed. He’d dropped his boxes in the room’s center and plopped himself proudly on the chaise lounge like a fat boy who’d discovered a lolly.

This is it
, he likely thought
. This is my moment. I have arrived. I am the most powerful man in the world.

The fool.

Like every man before him, he’d had no idea that the chancellor was merely a puppet—a doll to be used for Miranda’s own entertainment. Though, in his defense, the rest of the council never learned of this.

It had taken Hackner longer than the others to notice the glass of champagne resting on the corner of his new desk. He lifted it in the air, sniffed, and swirled it before returning it to the mahogany without a sip.

Then he reached for the ConSynth’s cool, glowing glass and rubbed its side, the oils from his fingertips leaving a thick, filmy residue. Disgusting. It was, however, an improvement over the previous chancellor—that one had shaken the ConSynth like a snow globe.

She appeared to Hackner then, in the doorway, with a glass of champagne in her hand.
Cheers
, she said.

She wore a fitted red dress that wrapped her body like cellophane and had a wicked neckline that plunged far past her breasts. She had a feeling Hackner was a man of insatiable desires. The way he plopped himself on the lounge. The smug smile. The touch of his fingers on the ConSynth’s glass.

A man starved for power and control. He was about to lose both. All it took was a glass of champagne.

He grabbed his glass.
How did you get in here?

She smiled coyly.
The better question would be how you’re going to get me out. This dress is too tight—stifling. You look like a strong man.
She winked
. A man with power.

Power
. The word danced on her tongue. One of the few lovers she’d ever known. She smiled and raised her glass again.
To your continued success.

He nodded eagerly and slid the champagne down his throat.

Poison. A slow-acting variety, of course. Harmless at first, but the compounds contained within it multiplied over time in vicious fashion. Without an antidote, he’d be dead in a month. And only Miranda, with the help of her blind assistant, knew how to create the antidote. It had never been written down. There was no recipe in any book. Just the one she kept in her head. Even the blind girls didn’t know what they were mixing.

And so she maintained her power with each new chancellor.

They fell for it every time.

The mysterious woman in red. The plunging neckline. The not-so-subtle ego stroke she gave through her toast.

And thus, the men who craved power were, without exception, ruined by it. This was the way of things in the Federation, as had it been in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, even the ancient Greeks and the Romans. Power corrupted all.

But not Miranda. Perhaps—she often mused—because she’d been corrupt in the first place.

Miranda shook her head free of nostalgia. This was not the night of Hackner’s appointment. It was not night at all. It was the first of the month—the day Sage came to visit.

She ran her fingers along the desk’s mahogany edge
.
Her fingers never really touched the wood—seeing as they weren’t really there—but she liked to imagine they did. Her form was nothing more than a holographic projection of her own consciousness. But it was a damn good one.

A small hand rapped against the door to the chancellor’s chambers.

“Come in, Sage,” called Miranda.

The door cracked open and Sage slid in, pushing it shut behind her.

Miranda stepped toward her. “How are you, my darling?” she asked.

She was always careful around the girl. She needed to be close, but not too close. The girl wanted to hear her voice nearby—the general echo of the ConSynth disturbed her—but Miranda couldn’t get too close, lest the girl reach out and try to touch her. Then the game would be up. Because Sage would realize she wasn’t really there—that she was only a projection.

The ConSynth couldn’t reproduce a body. It could only sustain a person’s consciousness, their mind, their soul, and even this small task required the machine to use energy from a very particular source.

Miranda called them “batteries.”

It sounded nicer that way. A silly euphemism. Less sinister for everyone involved. Made them forget the screams of the victims as they were strapped down, as the ConSynth’s cord was jabbed into their veins, as their eyes went blank.

It was a real shame the batteries only lasted a month. A pity the human body contained such a small amount of usable energy.

“I’m all right,” Sage said finally. Her eyes were blind, glazed over, but they still bore directly into Miranda.

Miranda hated when the girl stared. Like she knew what had happened to her. What Miranda had ordered done to her—the blindness, her mother’s death, all of that silly stuff. The girl had no way of knowing, of course. And she was too dim to make her own accusations.

Miranda smiled. “I’m so happy to hear that, sweetie.” The last word stuck to her tongue like an expired cough drop. She faked a yawn. “I’m quite tired, darling—you know where the materials are. Today, I’d like you to start with the beaker farthest to the right.”

Sage nodded and moved behind the desk. A lab table there had been set up with nine beakers. Hackner needed his monthly antidote for the poison, and Miranda was the only one who could give it to him. But she couldn’t touch anything, of course, so she used Sage to mix it. And since the girl couldn’t even see what she was doing, the antidote would remain known to only Miranda. And subsequently, she would remain forever safe and in power.

Miranda had to stifle a laugh at the thought. She, the most powerful leader in the world, needed the help of a blind girl. It was almost too rich.

She’d tried using sighted girls in the past, but it had repeatedly ended in disaster. One girl had revealed the antidote’s mixing formula to the man who was chancellor at the time. He’d threatened to pull the ConSynth’s plug and free himself from Miranda’s curse. Fortunately, Miranda had been able to have them both killed. But the incident had made her all the more cautious—paranoid.

Yes, it was better for everyone if her assistant was blind. The current system worked like oiled clockwork.

First, Miranda would have the chancellor lay out nine different ingredients in nine different beakers and vials, in nine different sequences. Then, he would leave, and the mixing girl—Sage, currently—would come in. Miranda would tell the girl the precise vials to pour into the precise beakers in the precise order. The ingredients and the compounds used to create the antidote were highly unstable. Failure to follow her instructions exactly resulted in the girl creating poison, rather than antidote.

And without his monthly antidote, the chancellor would die a slow, horrible death. It would begin as a cramp in his toes, then move to his calves, his hamstrings, thighs, on and on…

Eventually the cramp would make its way all the way up to his brain, and then it would hit his heart, which would relax, sending him into cardiac arrest. Then the cramps would begin again. His muscles would cramp without end before, finally, he died—not from physical injury, but from insanity that brought him to a fit of seizures.

Miranda knew the poison well—she’d designed it to work this way. If any chancellor attempted to create a new antidote, his muscles would cramp almost instantly from the toxic compounds’ double dosage. Miranda had learned that people who craved power didn’t like to die. She used this fact to her advantage.

Through this method—the poison and the antidote—Miranda had assured her own existence for the rest of time. She was, for all intents and purposes, immortal. So long as the ConSynth had a battery, she had a life. The chancellors would die, one after another, every five years—but not Miranda. Miranda was forever. A ghost. Not living, but certainly not dead. Every bit herself, every bit as powerful.

This was enough for her. The power was always enough.

Sage held up a beaker; she was done. She’d followed Miranda’s instructions. The solution was complete.

“Show it here, sweetie.” Miranda peered into the beaker and frowned. “That’s wrong. I’m sorry, darling, but that’s not right at all. The mixture is still blue.” She turned to the lab station. A vial of gold liquid sat unused in the corner. It wasn’t like Sage to make mistakes. Miranda clenched her jaw. “You forgot the third vial to the right,” she said. “I told you to pour it in after the vial farthest left.”