Omega (9 page)

I wove back through the armed drunks and
druggies towards the car and paused at the end of the sidewalk
before the driveway.

A figure in a hood and cloak stood leaning
against the driver’s side of the car. He didn’t seem to be armed,
and he made no move towards me. Unable to make out facial features
or anything about the person, I hesitated to confront someone in
this place where everyone was armed. But I did move a little closer
and peered at him.

“
That’s, um, our car,” I
said awkwardly.

No response. No movement. I felt him
watching me.

“
Hey! What’d I tell you!”
Niko belted from the direction of the house.

“
Great.” I rolled my eyes
and turned. “I couldn’t breathe in there!”

“
Get your ass back
here.”

“
Are you gonna let this
guy steal your car?” I pointed over my shoulder and then
turned.

The hooded figure was gone.

“
The smoke is getting to
you. Hurry up so we can leave.” The screen door slammed closed
behind Niko.

I walked around the car and searched the
night visually for the figure before finally doing what Herakles
told me no one ever does. I looked up.

The hooded figure had scaled the tree behind
the gravel parking area and was clinging to it.

“
Just, uh, don’t steal our
car,” I said and then turned away to obey Niko before he yelled at
me again. “I mean,
the
car. It’s already been stolen once tonight.”

This time I covered my nose and mouth with
my t-shirt when I entered the disgusting lair of Niko’s criminal
friends. He waited for me in the hallway.

“
Knock it off, Lisa,” he
grumbled and yanked my shirt off my nose.

“
This place is
disgusting,” I complained.

Niko got into my space until I took a step
back. “You may not like these people, but they’re going to help us.
So stop acting like a child and pretend to be grateful they aren’t
asking questions,” he snapped quietly enough for only me to
hear.

I felt bad after that. He was right. I
didn’t want to be here, but if they could help me get into DC where
I could find Herakles … “Sorry,” I murmured.

“
Good. Now go.” He pushed
me towards the door cracked halfway open.

I entered with some trepidation, not certain
what I’d find. It resembled what I imagined a criminal’s hangout
looked like, only with more guns and beer. The guy working at a
makeshift desk topped with bundles of money and small packages of
drugs was close to my age. He waved me over. Several more men were
in another corner, probably guards by their beefy statures. Two
women were sorting pills on another table.

I sat before the kid at the table.

“
How do you not have a
biotag?” he asked, his direct gaze showing no sign of intoxication
despite the beer bottles lining one side of his desk.

“
Stop it, Marty,” Niko
replied.

“
It’s easier to reprogram
an existing tag than insert a new one,” Marty said in
irritation.

“
Yep. I know. New one is
twice as expensive, too.” Niko nudged me.

I said nothing. Maybe I should’ve been
grateful, but I wasn’t feeling it. The hairs on the back of my neck
were on end, and my instincts were restless.

Marty snatched my wrist and began waving a
wand-like device lined with lights over one forearm then the other.
“No tag,” he said. “You know where I have to go to get these?” he
asked me, clearly blaming me for whatever criminal act he had to
perform.

“
No,” I
replied.

“
Corpse. I have to dig
them out of dead people.”

I pulled my hand back, grossed out.

“
Niko, keep her
still.”

Niko gripped my wrist and pinned it to the
table with strength I wasn’t able to shake. I watched Marty lift a
second device resembling a handgun and read something on the small
screen on one side of it.

“
Your name is now … Holly.
Holly Rodriguez, and you’re supposed to be Mexican.” Marty eyed me
critically. “You know Spanish? Because this says it’s your only
language.”

“
Who cares,” Niko replied.
“There are white Mexicans somewhere. Shoot her up. We’re in a
rush.”

Marty positioned the gun in the center,
underside of my forearm and pulled the trigger.

“
Ow,” I muttered at the
sharp sting.

“
Congrats. You now have a
biotag,” Marty said and lowered the gun.

I raised my forearm. A drop of blood hovered
over a dark, square microchip planted just beneath the surface of
my skin. The idea it had been in some other woman’s body, and she
was dead, weirded me out.

“
You want me to cut off
that rope?” Marty asked, tapping the red cord around my
wrist.

“
Nope. Just the biotag,”
Niko replied. He pulled a wad of cash out of a cargo pocket and
plunked it down on the desk. “As agreed.”

Marty counted it then added it to one of the
stacks on his desk. “Pleasure, as always. Good luck, Holly.”

I stood and moved towards the door, holding
my forearm. The pain was gone, but I was still disgusted by the
biotag. I turned to wait for Niko and saw him slide money from one
of Marty’s stacks into his pockets. He had distracted Marty by
showing him a knife.

I left, not wanting to be around if the
thugs in the corner caught on and shot Niko. Returning to the car,
I peered again into the tree branches without seeing the figure I
had spotted earlier. I didn’t really believe in magical creatures
the way the priests and others did. Herakles was very pragmatic,
not at all into the supernatural outside of the gods, and I had
adopted his realistic view of our world. Sprites and monsters
didn’t exist, even if the myths claimed otherwise.

Except … the creature from
the lake. I wasn’t afraid of whatever it had been by our car, not
like I had been of the grotesque. Now
that
was worth worrying about. But a
man in a hood hanging out in such a place? No
comparison.

“
Come on, Holly.” Niko
strode by me to the car and opened the driver’s side door, sliding
into it.

Eager to be out of here, I hurried around to
the passenger side. “Do they know you stole their money?”

“
Quiet, kid.” He turned
the car around and headed back down the driveway.

The gate rolled open, and Mike-the-guard
waved us through.

Ten minutes later, we were driving down the
highway toward DC again. Traffic slowed at the checkpoint, and Niko
released a sigh as we were waved through rather than stopped by men
dressed all in black wearing masks and carrying weapons.

“
That’s it?” I
asked.

“
They don’t usually wave
you through, and my luck has been bad for a while,” Niko
replied.

“
If you’re a criminal,
wouldn’t they be more interested in you than someone without a
chip?” I asked.

“
I have my ways of
avoiding detection.”

I had a feeling they were just as illegal as
everything else he did. Too tired and interested in DC to speak, I
focused on the buildings we were approaching. Signs and banners
telling citizens to report terrorists spouting anti-gods and
anti-government activity and beliefs to the SISA were everywhere:
squeezed between parking meters, scrawled over fast food restaurant
ads and plastered on the sides of buildings.

Graffiti was everywhere,
too, and I noticed a theme among the colorful tags as we passed.
They all started with
Mama says
…

…
don’t trust the
gov’t.

…
destroy the
SISA!

…
go home gods!

... bring back the Old Ways.

“
Mama is popular,” I
said.

“
She’s outfoxed SISA for
ten years.”

“
She must be really
smart.”

“
Probably. No one’s ever
met her. I sometimes think she’s a figurehead that doesn’t exist.
Even us criminals want to know we have someone to take care of us,
I suppose.”

“
Why are you a merc?” I
asked. “Doesn’t being a gladiator pay enough?”

He laughed. “You know nothing about the real
world, kid. I don’t know any gladiator who isn’t involved in the
Merc Guild or some other criminal enterprise.”

“
I had no idea,” I said
softly, somewhat disappointed to learn the fighters we watched on
Wednesday nights on the Gladiator Guild channel were criminals.
“What made you choose that instead of becoming a normal
citizen?”

Niko gave me a weird look. “You mean a slave
to the gods and their human underlings? Why would I want that? If
you don’t want to live a life of fear, you end up like me on the
streets and make a living where you can.”

I frowned.

“
Normal
people are afraid to speak their minds, to live their lives
the way they want, to follow their dreams. They are oppressed,
Alessandra, by the gods, by SISA, by the Supreme Magistrate. People
disappear every day and are never heard from again. No trials, no
justification, no real reason. Heresy is the biggest excuse given,
and there’s no one to tell that the SISA can’t do what they’re
doing. And that mess is ideal compared to what’s been going on
outside the wall since the Holy Wars erupted five years
ago.”

“
Holy Wars? What
wall?”

He eyed me. “Gods damn the priests! It’s not
my job to school you in the ways of the world. You’re lucky I got
you a biotag, you little shit! That came out of my salary.”

“
You stole the money
back!” My gods. This guy had issues. Why was he helping me for free
when he clearly didn’t like me? “We should return to the Old Ways,”
I said, hoping for a topic that didn’t make him yell quite so
much.

“
Exactly. You’re not as
stupid as you seem sometimes. You know what the Old Ways
are?”

“
Of course. I learned in
school. A time where humans governed themselves without the
influence of the gods. Life, liberty, equality and the pursuit of
happiness,” I recited from class.

“
They don’t teach that
shit in school. The knowledge has been lost, or would have been, if
not for Mama. It’s what she wants – to return to the Old Ways.” He
smiled faintly.

“
Strange. Our priests
taught us the Old Ways are supposed to return soon.”

“
I’m liking your priests
more and more. They’re clearly academics out of touch with the real
world, though. It’s impossible for the Old Ways to exist alongside
the gods.”

Unless the gods are
gone.
Puzzled, I rolled his words and
those of the priests around in my head. I was beginning to
understand that my world of twelve years wasn’t the same as this
one. The idea the Old Ways were almost lost when I’d lived every
day reciting
life, liberty, equality and
the pursuit of happiness
was odd. If the
priests were right, if they hadn’t been messing with me about being
the Oracle, I was beginning to see why they wanted me hidden until
the old Oracle died. The Old Ways could emerge only after she was
gone.
But why not get rid of me instead of
imprisoning me?

Not a lot made sense to me yet. I had much
to learn about the real world and a ton more to think about.

Niko stayed off the bigger streets through
DC and angled us to the side of the city closer to Maryland,
finally stopping in a rundown section of town that shouldn’t have
surprised me but did. The buildings were blocky with barred
windows, and vehicles that appeared to be abandoned lined one side
of the street. The thump of bass came from a house squeezed between
block apartment buildings. Masked SISA police patrolled the
neighborhoods on foot.

“
SISA’s everywhere inside
the wall and the military everywhere outside it.” Niko glared at
the police.

“
You prefer it
otherwise?”

“
The military is secular
and has a justice system. They answer to the people and don’t make
people disappear for saying the gods are nuts.”

We weren’t completely different. Aside from
Artemis and Lelantos, I was raised to be able to identify the other
gods and Titans but not to worship them.

He parked out front. We got out and went to
the door. There was no mistaking the round chinks in the concrete
walls on either side of the door for anything but bullet holes.

Thus far, I wasn’t impressed by the outside
world or those who inhabited it.

“
Are we visiting more of
your friends?” I asked.

“
No. This is one of my
safehouses.” He unlocked the door and walked in.

I trailed. He locked the door behind us and
went to the stairs on the far side of a lobby with scuffed floors
and sagging ceilings. He led me to an apartment on the second
floor. It was clean, neat and practically decorated. Grateful not
to be stuck in a place like the trailer, I put my backpack on the
floor.

“
Bathroom through there.
There’s only one, so lock the damn door if you’re in there,” he
said grouchily and pointed. He walked into his bedroom and flipped
on the lights.

The apartment had a small kitchen and dining
area along with a balcony overlooking the street behind where we
parked. The balcony doors, however, were barred, preventing anyone
from using the outside space.