The Travels of Scout Shannon Books 1-3

Chapter 23

23

Liv didn’t turn around. She had a panel from the wall removed and resting across the front of her hover chair as she leaned in to dig into the cables that had been behind it.

“I have a gun on you,” Scout felt compelled to point out.

“Whatever makes you comfortable,” Liv said, head still bent over her work. Scout looked at the pistol, then tucked it back away. Like Warrior had said, the most dangerous thing about Liv was her mouth. The gun would be useless against that.

“Why did you take out the power?” Scout asked.

“I didn’t. I’m trying to turn everything back on,” Liv said, reaching further into the cable-filled space.

“You can’t just flip a switch?”

“Not anymore. Clementine left a nice collection of booby traps.”

Scout watched her follow the length of a cable with her fingertips and pull out some sort of device that was attached to a number of other cables. She ran her hands delicately over it, trying not to disturb any of the junctions as she examined the cables.

“How do I know that’s true?” Scout asked. “You could be booby-trapping it yourself just now.”

“You don’t know anything about these systems, do you?” Liv asked, carefully grasping a cable in one hand. She had a small tool in the other, either something that had been left in the utility room or something she had pulled from her chair. Scout wondered what else was inside that chair. It curved around Liv’s folded legs like an egg. There was room enough for all manner of things. Perhaps even a weapon. And yet if Liv had a weapon, surely she would have brandished it before now.

“No, I don’t,” Scout admitted. “You can see why I can’t exactly trust you when I don’t know what it is you’re doing.”

“Scout, I’m tired. I don’t want to fight you, physically or verbally,” Liv said. Then she looked down at the dogs. “You trust your dogs, though, right? And your dogs don’t seem upset with me at the moment.” She stopped talking to focus on using the tool to detach the cable from the device. Only after she released a held breath did Scout realize that maybe Liv didn’t know what she was doing either, not completely.

“I don’t think my dogs are capable of recognizing the sort of threat you are,” Scout said.

Liv laughed a surprisingly genuine-sounding laugh. “You’re wise beyond your years, aren’t you? Listen, just let me finish what I’m working on here and I’ll explain all I can. We’re not enemies. And with Clementine likely looking to take us both out, we might as well be allies.”

“I might be better off on my own,” Scout said.

“You might,” Liv allowed. “But clearly I have skills you don’t. And vice versa. That might be the only advantage we have.”

Scout watched her work for a moment, then turned to shine her light back out in the hangar, as far as it could penetrate in every direction. There was no sign of Clementine. What was she waiting for? Why take out the lights and leave them exposed? She had left booby traps to slow them down, a distraction to tie them up while she accomplished something else.

“Do we really need lights that urgently?” Scout asked. “I don’t like sitting still while she’s on the move.”

“Lights? Maybe, maybe not. Air? Well, even that might last us long enough, but I’d feel better with it running,” Liv said.

“It is running,” Scout said. “I felt it.”

“It’s cycling old air through the station but it’s not pulling in fresh air from the surface,” Liv said, leaning forward once more to reach for more cables. “We’re few, and the space is large. We could probably breathe just fine for the few days we still have to wait for the storm to pass, but I’d rather not rely on that. Especially if Clementine decides to get really creative.”

“What do you think she’ll do?”

“Seal us off if she can. Find more remote ways of killing us. She prefers to avoid confrontation, Warrior’s death aside.”

“And Ottilie’s,” Scout added, but Liv said nothing. “So you agree she’s killing us off one by one.”

Liv gave another little laugh, this one devoid of real humor. “I know she is. I know her well. Too well, maybe. Come here and hold this for me.”

Scout moved closer but stopped just out of arm’s reach. Liv held out an elaborate knot of cables in one hand, still fumbling in the wall with the other, and only looked up at Scout when she still hadn’t taken what was offered.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Liv said.

“There could be live wires in there,” Scout said.

“I assure you the power is still out,” Liv said, but Scout refused to move. Liv sighed, taking her free hand out of the wall and leaning dangerously far out of her hover chair to extend it toward the dogs. Girl rushed eagerly forward to lick at her fingers. Shadow was more skittish but in the end also touched his nose to the strange hand, then wagged his tail.

“That’s not good enough for me,” Scout said.

“If I don’t fix this, we’ll likely asphyxiate. Is that good enough for you?” Liv was getting testy.

“No,” Scout said, lifting her chin. “I only have your word that we’re even in danger here.”

“Well, help or leave then.”

“I’ll do as I like.”

“Stars save me from moody teens,” Liv grumbled, balancing the knot of cables under one elbow so she could reach both hands inside the wall. She couldn’t get in as far as she needed to and tried tucking the knot closer to her armpit. Still she strained to reach whatever it was she needed.

Scout gave in with a sigh, gently extracting the knot of cables from under Liv’s arm and holding it up as Liv traced the cables back into the wall.

A moment later she sat back with another sigh of relief that made chills run up Scout’s spine at the thought of whatever unknown danger they had just avoided.

“No lights,” Scout said.

“Flip the switch,” Liv said, waving a hand toward the other end of the room. Scout found the switch; being the master switch, it was quite obvious. As soon as she pushed it into the up position, the lights flickered back on and the tiny space was filled with the sound of wind. Scout looked up at a massive fan overhead, pulling in air from the surface. It must be nighttime out there; the wind on her face was briskly cold.

“You’re going to explain now,” Scout said, half shouting to be heard over the fan.

“Yes, but not here. And not in that hangar either. Let’s get back to the kitchen; I’m starving.”

Scout wanted to argue but Liv was already moving away, her hover chair floating noiselessly over the thick dust. The dogs trotted after her, Scout reluctantly bringing up the rear.

“Shouldn’t we guard that?” Scout asked as she walked. “What’s to stop her from just doing it again?”

“I put in a few traps of my own,” Liv said. “Clementine may be clever, but not as clever as I am. I taught her everything she knows, not everything I know.”

“Wait—taught her?” Scout repeated, but Liv nudged her hover chair up to a higher speed and she and the dogs had to jog to keep up.

The maintenance door was nearly too narrow for Liv to get her chair through. The widest part of the egg-shaped chair got jammed briefly, but she powered through. The metal of the doorframe scraped against the chrome side of the chair, shrieking in a way that made Scout’s teeth hurt. She shone her light around the hangar behind them, worried the sound would draw Clementine out, but there was no sign of anyone.

She went through the doorway with the dogs and followed Liv back to the common room. Liv guided her chair around the pool of Viola’s and Warrior’s intermingled blood even though she wasn’t about to come in contact with it, hovering as she was. A gesture of respect, perhaps, Scout thought.

“Is there anything to eat that isn’t contaminated?” Liv asked, looking at the shattered remains of the biscuits and crackers strewn across the floor. Scout couldn’t remember what had knocked the tray off the table, Viola’s seizures or Clementine’s kicking feet.

“MREs,” Scout said. “I’ll grab you a couple. Any preference?”

“Not at all,” Liv said with another humorless laugh. “Never could tell one from the other anyway.”

Scout went into the pantry and gathered an assortment: two dinners for each of them plus another two for the dogs. Then she grabbed a couple bottles of jolo and went back out to the common room.

“Maybe we’d be safer in the kitchen?” she said. She wasn’t sure if that was true, but she didn’t savor the idea of sitting down to eat in a room cluttered with dead bodies, one of whom had been her friend, if only for a few days.

“If she’s going to get us, she’s going to get us. I’m done hiding,” Liv said, but she guided her chair into the kitchen to park it at one end of the chopping block. Scout debated for a moment but then carried the food over to Liv without shutting the hatch. Being able to see felt like the safer bet.

Liv was holding out her hands for her share of the food. She took the two meals without comment but smirked as Scout handed her one of the bottles of jolo. “I haven’t had this since I was a kid.”

“Right now it’s safer than the tea or coffee,” Scout said, opening her own bottle. “I don’t know how much has been poisoned or contaminated. Could be the leaves and beans, or the samovars, or the cups—”

“Or the water,” Liv added, raising an eyebrow suggestively. She popped open her own bottle and took a long swallow. She grimaced. “I never liked it much as a kid. Always preferred the fizzy lemon drink. Do they still make that?”

“I don’t know what that would be. Do you want me to look? Everything here is so old, I bet she has a few bottles,” Scout offered.

“This will be fine for now,” Liv said, activating the heating element on the first of her two meals. Scout handed her one of the titanium sporks she had found in the kitchen.

Scout opened two of the meals and served them to the dogs at room temperature. Then she warmed one of her meals, opened it up, and sporked some in her mouth without looking at the label. Liv wasn’t wrong.

Girl paused in her eating, ears alert as she looked back towards the bathroom. Shadow looked up as well. Scout paused in her chewing, trying to hear what they were listening for. But they both went back to eating without so much as growling. Scout rose up from her chair, leaning over the table to look down towards the bathrooms.

“She’s not coming. Not yet,” Liv said.

“How can you be so sure?” Scout asked. “Because you ‘know her’?”

“Yes,” Liv said. She finished off her jolo in one long chug, then sat holding the bottle in her hands as if it were a fragile treasure. The sugar and caffeine that always made Scout’s brain sing seemed to just make Liv melancholy. “She’s going to come for me soon, but not just yet. And when she does, she will kill me.”

“You say that like you have no intention of fighting her,” Scout said.

“I don’t. Aside from that just being generally useless, I’m done.”

“Done fighting?”

“Done with living. But yes, that too.”

“This wasn’t your attitude a few hours ago,” Scout said. “What changed?”

“Nothing. Everything. I don’t know.” She set the bottle aside and buried her face in her hands briefly. But she wasn’t weeping, just waiting. At last she sat back, rubbed the back of one hand across her brow, and reached for her second meal. “I wasn’t injured in the war, you know.”

“No?” Scout said. She hadn’t given it any thought one way or the other.

“No, I was paralyzed in an accident, when I was a kid. My parents had enrolled me in the exchange program. I was all set to go up into space, to train at working in free fall. Not everyone who went up there was allowed to stay, but I was prepared to work twice as hard. I wanted it so badly. But then the war broke out, and all of those programs were canceled.”

“Ebba said after the war the Space Farers took up all the wounded. Couldn’t you have gone up then?”

“By then it was already too late for me. I was tainted.”

“Tainted?”

Liv took a deep breath. “I’m a spy. From the outbreak of the war. I was just seventeen, I had lost the opportunity of a lifetime and was quite despondent. Then a Space Farer approached me with an offer. If I enlisted early, got into communications, and passed key intel on to them, I would earn the right to live in space. Fool that I was, I leapt at the chance.”

“You accused my parents of being spies,” Scout said.

“I think they were. I don’t know for sure; I never met another Planet Dweller spy or had direct knowledge of one, but I knew there were others working in secret alongside me. I’m certain there were. But if they’re dead, it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?”

Scout said nothing. The melancholy, the regret dripping from Liv’s every word was disturbing to her. Where was the cool manipulator now?

“I believed them. For a very long time I believed them. But they kept putting off when I would get to go to space.”

“The war ended years ago,” Scout said.

“I know it. They promised me more—more space on the station and money and anything I could ever want. So I stayed and continued to spy. More than spy. There was little they didn’t already know anymore, so to be valuable, to be worth everything they were offering me, I had to do more.”

“You never saw anything they said they would give you? And yet you still believed them?”

“Once I turned over the first bit of intelligence, I had committed treason. Taking their further deals, a big part of that was because if I didn’t they’d have exposed me. I would be imprisoned.”

“So you kept doing bad things against your own people?”

“I have no people,” Liv said, practically spitting the words out. “Being a spy meant never getting close to anyone. I was barely older than you when I started.”

“Did you give intel that led to the destruction of the cities?” Scout demanded.

“No, never,” Liv said. “I swear. You saw how angry I was with Viola. I would be some kind of hypocrite if I accused her of my own crimes.”

“Yes, you would be,” Scout said.

“What I reported on was largely the movements of the governors. You might not remember, but during wartime their locations were always secret.”

“So the Space Farers wouldn’t drop a rock on a city to take out a leader,” Scout said. She remembered well.

“Rumors were always spread of secret tunnels under the cities, even of an underground train that took them from city to city. All lies. They were never in the cities at all. They stayed in places like this, or newer underground stations on islands just off the coast. Never in the cities.”

“But if you passed that on to the Space Farers, then why did they drop asteroids on the cities? They knew their targets weren’t there.”

“Maybe to flush them out, to demoralize the Planet Dwellers, to destroy our economy. It was wartime; they made war.”

“They were better at it than us,” Scout said.

“The big guns hurt them. More than they let on,” Liv said. “Which is why they decided not to risk another open war now.”

“War isn’t coming?”

“The Planet Dwellers are moving toward it, but the Space Farers see little to gain. If we hoard all the food, they suffer. But if they drop rocks on us until we submit, there’s still no food and they still suffer. They have a different plan.”

“You know their plan?” Scout asked.

“I implemented their plan,” Liv said, the bitterness back in her voice. “Clementine.”

“Clementine,” Scout repeated. “She poisoned Ruth.”

“Yes.”

“But Warrior said that had taken place over a long time. Small doses building up, which was why the rest of us ate the same food as Ruth but were okay.”

“Her target hadn’t just been Ruth,” Liv said.

“The governor. No hiding for him this time. You said you taught her?” Scout asked.

“Not everything. Killing she already knew. I just finished off some of her technical skills. My primary function was teaching her to blend in here.”

“Does she talk?”

“I’ve never heard her do so,” Liv said. “I don’t know why. My higher-ups never said.”

“If her target was the governor, why did she leave with Ruth?”

“I don’t know,” Liv admitted. “I’ve tried a few times to pull her aside and ask, but she’s giving me nothing. Clearly she has a separate script from the one given to me.”

“A separate script from the Space Farers? Or her own agenda?”

“I don’t know,” Liv said. “But there’s one more thing I have to tell you.”

“What?” Scout asked.

Liv jumped, clapping a hand to the side of her neck as if swatting a bug.

Scout lunged forward, pulling her hand away from her neck, but there was nothing to be seen but a tiny red dot. Had it been an insect? She looked into Liv’s eyes and saw what was becoming an all too familiar sight: eyes desperate to communicate while a mouth moved soundlessly.