Chapter 22 Chapter 22: Deal with the Devil
“John!” she barked, the command cutting through the lingering haze of incense and spirits. Her voice, once a mystical murmur, now held the effortless authority of a queen. “Quit lurking in the doorway like a lovesick pup and get in here, you big oaf.”
John Smith stepped out of the shadows, a wry grin softening his sharp features. Mary reached for him, pulling him down into a kiss that was less about passion and more about possession, a public stamp of ownership. She caressed his cheek, her thumb brushing his jawline. “Say hello to Tillyanna,” she said, her eyes never leaving his. “Tilly. Friend of the Smiths.” She paused, letting the significance hang in the air before adding, “And my sister.”
The title landed on me like a physical weight, both an honour and a burden. Sister. In a world of knives, she’d just handed me a shield. Or a target.
John’s eyes, shrewd and calculating, flicked from Mary to me, reassessing my value on the spot. The grin returned, warmer this time. He took a shot from the gin bottle he still carried, the liquid catching the low light, then offered it to me. “Cheers,” we said in unison, our voices a rough chorus. The gin was fire and flowers, a taste of his power and his land.
Mary placed a firm, proprietary hand on his chest. “You can trust her; you should help her if you can. Might just bring unforeseen riches to the family.” Her tone shifted, becoming grave. “Don’t betray her, and don’t trust anyone around her. There’s a storm coming, John. A big one. And we need to be on the right side of the wall to ride it out.” She flashed me one last, enigmatic smile, her energy visibly dimming. “I’m tired, the spirits take their toll. Besides,” she added with a wave of her hand, “you don’t need a fortune-teller for business talk. I’ll take my leave.”
As she swept out, the silence she left behind was instantly shattered. The casino doors burst open, and the room filled with a wave of noise and bodies, first the rest of the Brit crew, then their wealthy, jittery customers. The air thickened with smoke and the clatter of chips.
John watched the crowd for a moment before turning his full attention back to me, the noise fading into a dull roar behind him. “Well, if Mary says you’re to be trusted, that’s good enough for me,” he said, his eyes boring into mine, leaving no doubt that his trust was conditional and expensive. “But things around here, sister or not, still cost. And before I open my coffers, you need to tell me what the hell you’re doing in my part of the city.”
I hesitated, my mind racing. The gin, the beating, the psychic whiplash of Mary’s reading, it was a cocktail that made trust feel like a dangerous gamble. But the clock was ticking on Babka, on the book, on my life. Shit. I needed an anchor in this storm, and he was the only one throwing a line.
“Well, how do I start?” I began, my voice low. “You know Charles from Sec-”
He moved faster than I expected, cutting me off with a sharp chop of his hand and a glance that silenced the rest of my sentence. “Not here,” he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. “Walls have ears, and most of them work for him. Let’s take this outside. I’ll show you the real city.”
Without another word, he led me through a maze of back rooms and unmarked doors, leaving the glitter and greed of the casino behind. We finally stopped at a heavy, reinforced door with an elaborate locking mechanism of gears and bolts. He worked the lock with a series of practiced clicks and clunks. When he heaved it open, blinding midday sunlight flooded the dark corridor, forcing me to throw up a hand against the sudden glare.
“This, my friend,” John announced with palpable pride, “is the engine room of the Brits. This is Agriculture.”
As my eyes adjusted, the view stole my breath. Before me stretched a vast, breathtaking expanse of green, a stark contrast to the rust and decay of the sectors. Neat rows of crops I couldn’t name waved in the slight breeze. Beyond them, pens held horses, pigs, goats, and hulking, placid creatures I could only guess were cows, things I’d only seen in faded pictures in The Sisters’ books. Dozens of farmhands, humans, ferals, and mutants alike, worked the land under the sun, a synchronized machine of survival.
“This is the breadbasket of New Eden. Everything we eat, everything that keeps this city from eating itself, comes from here,” John said, striding forward with the air of a king surveying his domain. “Now, I just need to find someone…”
We walked past rows of strange, fragrant plants. The stump where my left pinkie used to be itched fiercely, a permanent reminder of my abysmal failure and lack of patience in The Sisters’ agricultural studies. The air was thick and rich with the scent of living compost and damp earth.
“Mr. Jack! There you are, you old bugger,” John called out, his voice warm.
An elderly man with a face like a weathered map and a gnarled wooden staff looked up from inspecting a plant and broke into a gap-toothed grin. “John.”
“My friend Tilly and I need a place to talk. Are the wagons free?”
“Aye, they are for you, John. Always.”
He led me deeper into the farm to a cleared area where six brightly painted gypsy wagons stood in a perfect, silent circle. John opened the carved door to the nearest one and gestured me inside.
The space was bigger than it looked from the outside, yet incredibly cozy, a tiny, mobile home with a small stove, a bed nook, and a table. It smelled of old wood, polish, and dried herbs. “We can speak freely in here,” John said, pulling the door shut and plunging us into a quiet, amber-lit gloom. “Away from whispering walls.”
He gestured toward a built-in bench before dragging a chair opposite me. He slammed the gin bottle and two thick glass tumblers on the table between us with a definitive thud.
“You’re new here,” he began, his long, piano-player fingers flexing as he poured two generous measures. “And there are some things you need to accept if you want to keep breathing.” He started counting off points on his fingers. “First, people in Sectors 1 and 2 are basically slaves. We grow the food, make the goods, and live in the shit so the pretty people in the upper sectors don’t have to. Yeah, some get lucky, win the lottery, we even hold one twice a year for a spot in Sector 4.” He pushed a glass toward me. “Cheers.” We clinked and knocked them back, the gin a familiar burn.
“Thing is,” he continued, wiping his mouth, “nobody’s ever seen anyone again after they win. Not a letter, not a whisper. That was the second thing. Third, Sector 3 tech and the churches? They’re not ours. They’re tools, used to control us, to keep us compliant and in the dark.” He refilled our glasses. “Fourth, Charles and that gang of thugs they call ‘security’? They’re not here to protect us. They’re here to spy, to keep us in line, and to clean up any messes that threaten the status quo.” He leaned in close, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper. “And lastly, they’ve got eyes in every sector, people doing their dirty work. Half the gang wars, the turf battles down here? They can be traced right back to them, stirring the pot to keep us divided. So, trust no one. No one.”
He sat back, studying me, his expression unreadable. “Now, your turn. Why are you really in Brit Sector?”
I took a fortifying sip of gin, the pieces of my predicament clicking together under his blunt summary of this hellhole. I decided to gamble. “Charles took something from me. A book. From my past life, it’s written in Russian. If anyone can read it… I’m dead. He’ll need a translator, but by the time he finds one…” I let the sentence hang, the implication clear. “I heard there were Russians living in this area. It was my only lead.”
John nodded slowly, processing. “We Brits have our own networks. I only know one person who might speak that tongue, Babka. She’s sweet, old, makes a mean stew. I’m sure we can… convince her to disappear for a few days, keep her out of Charles’s hands. As for the book itself?” He whistled low. “I suspect it’s already in the hands of the Church of the Machine. I can talk to some people, lean on the right necks. But it won’t be cheap.” He locked eyes with me, all business now. “Truth be told, unless you’ve got a hidden fortune, you’ll need to sell a kidney. Or two. Mary said you could make me rich. Now’s the time to prove your worth.”
In my mind’s eye, I saw it: the three sealed crates buried under a cairn of rubble just beyond the dead river. A veritable fortune, supplies, a pre-Fall rifle, and enough pure, uncut Stim, uppers, and Rads to keep a whole town flying for a week. “What if I didn’t pay in Chids?” I asked, my voice steady. “What if I paid you in Stim, uppers, and Rads?”
He raised an eyebrow, a spark of interest igniting in his eyes. “How many of each?”
I swallowed, naming the figure that represented my entire salvageable past. “Thirty bottles. Thirty pills of each type. Enough to get the little lady gone for a long while. Would that buy the book back?”
He threw his head back and laughed, a genuine, hearty sound that echoed in the small wagon. “That’ll buy Babka a month-long holiday in a locked room and the exact fucking coordinates of your book. The rest, the actual grabbing of it that’s your problem.”
I thought of the journey, the mutated things that roamed the wastes between here and my stash. The sheer, suicidal danger of it. Steeling myself, I added another chip to the bet. “Then I’ll need transportation. I can’t exactly haul that on my back.”
He laughed again, pouring the last of the gin. “I like your guts, sister. Alright. A covered wagon, two good horses, and a driver who knows how to keep his mouth shut and his head down. But the rest, the protection, the digging, the not-getting-eaten, that’s on you. Deal?”
A cold fear, primal and sharp, prickled down my spine. I was betting my life on a man I’d just met and a fortune I didn’t yet have. “Deal. But I need time to get things in order, to plan the route”
He downed his drink and stood up, the meeting clearly over. “Time’s the one thing you don’t seem to have. Like I said, Babka can vanish for a few days, but after that, people will ask questions. And if that happens, the deal’s off. The wagon will be ready and waiting at the northeast gate at sunrise.” He opened the wagon door, the sunlight once again assaulting my senses. He looked back at me, his expression grim. “I suggest you use it.”