Estranged (10 page)

“
Ah.”

Kalei looked up at the fence. The
metal seemed brand new, and a curling line of razorwire gleamed as
it caught the light of a nearby streetlamp. A slight hum suggested
it was electric as well.

Lecia noticed Kalei’s inspection of
the fence and said, “They pump electricity through it around the
clock to keep Estranged from trying to climb over. The razor wire
is just for show. It wouldn’t really slow down an
Estranged.”

Kalei looked at Lecia. “I already know
that.”

Lecia smiled. “But what
you don’t know is that
I
have a solution for electricity.” She pulled her
book bag forward and started rummaging through it until she
produced what looked like the clamps from an old jumper cable.
Except, instead of a cable connecting the two, each of the clamps
had their own homemade device jerry-rigged onto them. It looked
like someone had taken the battery pack out of a half dozen
cellphones and applied a lot of duct tape. “A friend of mine made
‘em for me,” she said proudly.

Kalei jibed, “What? Couldn’t convince
the Wardens to let you in the front gate?”

Lecia giggled. “SWORDE frowns upon
Untouched visitors.” She chuckled some more at her own joke and
then walked over to the fence. A narrow hole had been cut through
the chain-link, although both sides of the hole still came together
and prevented anyone from passing through without touching the
fence. Lecia reached out her hands, held the clamps to either side
of the gap, and, turning her head away, she quickly clamped the
devices onto the metal. As she did so, she hastily jumped back,
shaking her hands as though trying to get something off. Lecia took
a look at the hole, and then at Kalei. A broad grin spread across
Lecia’s face. “There.” She proudly placed her hands on her hips.
“The clamps have negated the electricity around the hole. After
you!”

Kalei wasn’t exactly comfortable with
going first, but if anyone was going to be a guinea pig against an
electric fence, why not the undying? She got down on her knees and
tentatively touched the metal. It felt warm to the touch, but it
didn’t bite.

“
Well, go on,” Lecia
urged. Kalei shot her a glare before pushing back the chain-link
and crawling through.

On the other side, the vast stone
walkways spread out for about a quarter mile to Kalei’s left and
right. Jutting out from the walkway every few hundred feet were
massive concrete docks reaching out into the water until the dark
night consumed them. The water seemed dark and menacing as it
swirled and crashed against the man-made structures, slowly ripping
them apart piece by piece. On the nearest dock, Kalei could see
that the sea had already claimed several feet of the pier where the
cement had cracked and fallen away. The pieces that remained
jutting above the water’s surface watched her with gleaming
barnacle eyes. Kalei turned away and watched Lecia crawl through
the fence. She had no clue where the small woman planned to take it
from here.

Having safely cleared the fence, Lecia
brushed herself off and led Kalei to the next dock over. Taking a
flashlight out of her bag, Lecia turned it on and took a small set
of service stairs down to the water’s surface. There, sheltered in
the shadow of a massive, rusting cargo ship was a small dingy,
bouncing and bobbing on the waves, a bright counterpart to its
companion.

“
Ta-dah! My ticket in and
out of Downtown! Isn’t she a beauty?”

The dingy was built entirely out of
wood, and from what Kalei could tell in the light of the
flashlight, someone had tried to paint it blue. But the paint had
been applied haphazardly, missing wide sections here and there, and
whatever paint had managed to make it onto the boat was already
peeling away, exposing the dark, rotting wood
underneath.

Kalei replied, “Yup, a real
beauty.”

Lecia pulled the boat closer and
climbed in easily. Kalei took a long, wary look at the craft before
climbing in after her, struggling not to let the boat tip under her
added weight.

Once they were out on the water, Kalei
started to realize what a bad idea this was. Not the fact that they
were a couple girls taking a small wooden boat out onto the deepest
lake-harbor in the entire continent, although that was plenty
stupid in and of itself. But she was more worried about what would
happen when they landed in the city. There were real people out
here, and if Kalei was among them... then they could
die.

Lecia had only just pushed the boat
off the rocks when Kalei started to climb out. “I’m going
back.”

“
What?” Lecia struggled to
keep her balance as Kalei moved across the dingy. “No! Sit down.
You’re going to tip us over.” But the boat was moving fast, and
already they were a few feet from the rocks and drifting. With the
cargo ship blocking out most of the light from downtown, the water
looked cold and sinister as the tips of the waves caught the stray
orange light from Lecia’s flashlight and reflected it back at them.
Sitting back down, Kalei resigned herself to the
journey.

“
How far away is this
meeting spot?”

“
Not far. After we land,
it’s just a couple blocks that way,” Lecia said, pointing into the
night.

As Lecia rowed away, Kalei warily
watched the hulking, groaning hulls that made up the Ship’s
Graveyard of Westlake.

Eighteen years ago on E-day, the docks
were one of the first places to be attacked. Caught unaware, and
unable to pull out on the low tide, many of the ships lost half
their crew to the Estranged before an alarm was raised. According
to the stories Kalei had heard, most of the survivors had made it
out by sheer luck.

Moments before the first attack, one
man had jumped off the bow of a cruise liner, showing off at a
party. When he came to the surface and heard shouts up above, he
had assumed it was in reaction to his spontaneous leap. But when
the shouts turned to screams, he quickly realized something was
wrong and managed swim to shore before any of the Estranged spotted
him.

Others were less lucky, sealing
themselves into watertight holds to wait for help, only to
suffocate before anyone arrived.

Kalei’s eyes skipped from one hull to
the next, dozens upon dozens of boats and ships, and she was
reminded of just how many people had lost their lives in this
place. A cold shiver ran down her spine. Even Lecia had the sense
to keep the silence as she quietly rowed the dingy past the
floating graves.

Eventually, they broke free of the
docks and ventured out onto the open water of the harbor. The boat
rocked and swayed, often tipping to alarming degrees as it was
caught by the larger waves, but overall the trip was uneventful.
About twenty minutes later, the floor of the dingy gave a muffled
protest as it hit rock and sand.

“
Here we are!” Lecia
announced brightly.

While Lecia camouflaged the boat,
Kalei waited and watched the bright skyline of the new city,
clenching and unclenching her fists as she eyed the gleaming lights
of the new skyscrapers.

When Lecia was ready, they climbed up
the rocky shore and entered the part of the city known as “The Grey
Zone” because of its proximity to Downtown. The most notable aspect
of the district was its dirt-cheap property prices because the area
was known to get occasional Estranged attacks from Downtown
escapees. Only the truly desperate dared to live here. The shops
and office buildings were only marginally better maintained than
the buildings that populated Downtown. In this late hour of the
night, the streets were empty.

Until, true to Lecia’s word, they saw
a man just a couple blocks in from the water.

The guy wasn’t much to look at. He
leaned with his back against one of the brick buildings and one leg
up against the wall. He was skinny and wore only jeans – no shirt.
With no muscles to display either. Along his right arm, a tattoo of
a Chinese dragon wound its way up to rest its oversized head on his
shoulder; on the left side of his exposed chest, a cluster of three
small black stars had been inked in. His head was bald, aside from
a short Mohawk down the middle.

With black-nailed fingers, he pulled
an unlit cigarette from his mouth and threw it on the ground as he
demanded, “What the fuck is this about, Lecia?” He stomped on the
roll of tobacco and rubbed it into the pavement with his shoe,
making eye contact with Kalei. She met his glare with her
own.

With a hesitant glance over her
shoulder, Lecia pointed at Kalei and said, “I, uh, have a friend
here who’s interested in the Tusic Organization.”

The man broke eye contact and looked
Kalei up and down. “What the fuck do you want with Tusic,
bitch?”

Kalei stood her ground. “I was
thinking about joining up. But after seeing your sorry ass, I know
I have the wrong place.”

That didn’t go over well. Pissed, he
started to cross the distance between them, spitting and cursing
until his phone rang. She never knew a gangster to stop in mid-rage
to answer his cellphone, but this one did. He glanced at the caller
ID and blanched. Suddenly shaking, he tapped the screen and
answered the phone. In a tone far more polite than the one he had
used with Kalei, he said, “Hey, um, ahem, hello, Boss. What? Oh. Uh
huh.” He grew a few shades paler. “Right.” He turned to Kalei, and
with an apologetic, “He, uh, wants to talk to you,” he offered her
the device.

“
Who is it?” Kalei asked,
not even reaching for it.

His lips curled back for a moment, but
then he quickly stuffed the snarl away and said in a controlled
voice, “You want to join up with Franklin so bad? Here he
is.”

Confused, Kalei took the phone.
“Hello?”

“
Hi, Kalei. Landen
Franklin here. Sorry about my associate. Recruits are in short
supply these days. So what can I do for you?”

Landen Franklin had a distinctive
voice that could make anyone optimistic just by hearing it, and
this was definitely it, but there was no way the man himself would
be calling her up in the dead of night on some punk’s phone. Voice
changers were easy to acquire these days, and it wouldn’t be hard
to get a voice sample for a famous person like Franklin.

“
What kind of game is
this?”

“
Excuse me?” The voice was
genuinely confused.

“
Why the hell would Landen
Franklin be calling me up? You’d better drop the act, asshole. I’m
not gonna play.”

She heard a laugh on the
other end as the gangster frantically mouthed,
What the fuck are you doing!

The voice said, “Sorry, there seems to
be a misunderstanding. What can I do to convince you that I’m
Landen Franklin?”

“
You could start by
getting your ass down here.”

He laughed again. “Sorry, I can’t do
that. How about this? Just a second.” There was a pause as she
heard his phone hit a hard surface, and then a beep went off in her
ear. His voice was more distant when he said, “Okay, Kalei. Look at
your phone.”

Confused, she did as he asked.
Somehow, he was able to remotely activate the video chat on her
phone. And there he sat, Landen Franklin, the spitting image of his
portraits from over fifteen years ago. Only, instead of shaking
hands with someone important, or signing a big check for the needy,
now he was lounged back in an office chair with a shuttered window
behind him. A lamp on the desk lit his face in a soft orange light.
“Okay, so now you know that I am who I am, and obviously you are
still you. So, how is Estranged life treating you?”

Kalei was a bit bewildered to be
talking to Landen Franklin, but that didn’t change anything. “Cut
the crap. How do you know me?”

“
Your grandfather and I go
way back. And right now, I need your help.”

“
Which grandfather? My
mom’s side or my dad’s?”

“
Last name Demir, your
mom’s side. I’m guessing you never got a chance to meet
him?”

“
Of course not. He took
off when my mom was a baby. Not exactly a great guy.”

“
Well, you didn’t know him
like I did. Before I started Tusic, your grandpa taught me
everything I needed to know. In fact, if it wasn’t for him and his
partner, I would never be where I am today.”

Kalei eyed him warily. His body
language told her he was telling the truth, but... “There’s no way
you and my grandfather were buddies.”

Franklin shrugged. “Sorry, Kalei, I
don’t have the time to dig into the past and explain to you what
did and didn’t happen, so let’s move on to something I think you
will understand. SWORDE is too powerful. They have too many
secrets, and for the sake of this city, we need to take them
down.”

Kalei wholeheartedly agreed with him,
but she needed to see where he was coming from first. “What makes
you say that?”

Franklin leaned forward onto his desk
and said, “You ever hear of SWORDE’s Victim Protection Program,
Kalei?”

“
Of course.”

“
Do you know what happens
to people who are entered into this program?”

Kalei swallowed a batch of saliva that
had become uncomfortably wedged in the back of her throat.
“No.”