Frozen

1

IT WAS THE START OF THE WEEKEND, amateur night; her table was crowded with conventioneers, rich kids flashing platinum chips, a pair of soldiers on leave—honeymooners nuzzling between drinks, nervous first-timers laying down their bets with trembling fingers. Nat shuffled the cards and dealt the next hand. The name she used had come to her in a fragment from a dream she could not place, and could not remember, but it seemed to fit. She was Nat now. Familiar with numbers and cards, she had easily landed a job as a blackjack dealer at the Loss—what everyone called the Wynn since the Big Freeze. Some days she could pretend that was all she was, just another Vegas dreamer, trying to make ends meet, hoping to get lucky on a bet.

She could pretend that she had never run, that she had never stepped out of that window, although “fall” wasn’t the right word; she had glided, flying through the air as if she had wings. Nat had landed hard in a snowbank, disarming the perimeter guards who had surrounded her, stealing a heat vest to keep herself warm. She followed the lights of the Strip and once she arrived in the city it was easy enough to trade in the vest for lenses to hide her eyes, allowing her to find work in the nearest casino.

New Vegas had lived up to her hopes. While the rest of the country chafed under martial law, the western frontier town was the same as it ever was—the place where the rules were often bent, and where the world came to play. Nothing kept the crowds away. Not the constant threat of violence, not the fear of the marked, not even the rumors of dark sorcery at work in the city’s shadows.

Since her freedom, the voice in her head was exultant, and her dreams were growing darker. Almost every day she woke to the smell of smoke and the sound of screams. Some days, the dreams were so vivid she did not know if she was sleeping or awake. Dreams of fire and ruin, the smoldering wreckage, the air thick with smoke, the blood on the walls . . .

The sound of screams . . .

“Hit me.”

Nat blinked. She had seen it so clearly. The explosion, the flashing bright-white light, the black hole in the ceiling, the bodies slumped on the floor.

But all around her, it was business as usual. The casino hummed with noise, from the blaring pop song over the stereo, the craps dealers barking numbers as they raked in die, video poker screens beeping, slot machines ringing, players impatient for their cards. The fifteen-year-old bride was the one who had asked for another. “Hit me,” she said again.

“You’ve got sixteen, you should hold,” Nat advised. “Let the house bust, dealer hits on sixteen, which I’m showing.”

“You think?” she asked with a hopeful smile. The child bride and her equally young husband, both soldiers, wouldn’t see anything like the main floor of a luxury casino for a long time. Tomorrow they would ship back out to their distant patrol assignments, controlling the drones that policed the country’s far-flung borders, or the seekers that roamed the forbidden wastelands.

Nat nodded, flipped up the next card and showed the newlyweds . . . an eight, dealer busted, and she paid out their winnings. “Let it ride!” The bride whooped. They would keep their chips in play to see if they could double their holdings.

It was a terrible idea, but Nat couldn’t dissuade them. She dealt the next round. “Good luck,” she said, giving them the usual Vegas blessing before she showed them her cards. She was sighing—Twenty-one, the house always wins, there goes their wedding bonus—when the first bomb exploded.

One moment she was collecting chips, and the next she was thrown against the wall.

Nat blinked. Her head buzzed and her ears rang, but at least she was still in one piece. She knew to take it slow, gingerly wiggling fingers and toes to see if everything still worked, the tears in her eyes washing away the soot. Her lenses hurt, they felt stuck, heavy and itchy, but she kept them on just to be safe.

So her dream had been real after all.

“Drau bomb,” she heard people mutter, people who had never seen a drau—let alone a sylph—in their lives. Ice trash. Monsters.

Nat picked herself up, trying to orient herself in the chaos of the broken casino. The explosion had blown a hole in the ceiling and pulverized the big plate-glass windows, sending incandescent shards tumbling down fifty stories to the sidewalks below.

Everyone at her blackjack table was dead. Some had died still clutching their cards, while the newlyweds were slumped together on the floor, blood pooling around their bodies. She felt sick to her stomach, remembering their happy faces.

Screams echoed over the fire alarms. But the power was still on, so pop music from overhead speakers lent a jarring, upbeat soundtrack to the casino’s swift fall into chaos, as patrons stumbled about, reeling and dazed, covered in ashes and dust. Looters reached for chips while dealers and pit bosses fended them off with guns and threats. Police in riot gear arrived, moving from room to room, rounding up the rest of the survivors, looking for conspirators rather than helping victims.

Not too far from where she was standing, she heard a different sort of screaming—the sound of an animal cornered, of a person begging for his life.

She turned to see who was making that terrible noise. It was one of the roulette dealers. Military police surrounded him, their guns trained on his head. He was kneeling on the floor, cowering. “Please,” he cried, collapsing into heart-wrenching sobs. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, please don’t shoot!” he begged, and when he looked up, Nat could see what was wrong. His eyes. They were blue, a startling, iridescent hue. His lenses must have slipped off, or he’d taken them off when they burned from the smoke, as she almost did hers. The blue-eyed ones were said to be able to control minds, create illusions. Apparently, this one didn’t have the ability to control minds, or his tears.

He tried to hide his face, tried to cover his eyes with his hands. “Please!”

It was no use.

He died with his blue eyes open, his uniform splattered with blood.

Executed.

In public.

And no one cared.

“It’s all right, everyone, move on, the danger’s passed now. Move along,” the guards said, ushering the survivors to the side, away from the corpses in the middle of the broken casino, as a sanitation and recovery team began cleaning up the mess, moving the tables back upright.

Nat followed the stream of people herded in a corner, knowing what would come next—ret scans and security checks, standard procedure after a disturbance. “Ladies and gentlemen, you know the drill,” an officer announced, holding up his laser.

“Don’t blink,” security officers warned as they flashed their lights. Patrons lined up quietly—this wasn’t the first bombing they’d survived—and several were impatient to get back to their games. Already the craps dealers were calling out numbers again. It was just another day in New Vegas, just another bomb.

“I can’t get a read, you’re going to have to come with us, ma’am,” a guard said to an unfortunate soul slumped by the slot machines. The sallow-faced woman was led to a separate line. Those who failed the scans or carried suspect documentation would be thrown into lockdowns. They would be left to the mercy of the system, left to rot, forgotten, unless a celebrity took a shine to their cause, but lately the mega-rockers were all agitating to restore the ozone. The only magic they believed in was their own charisma.

It was her turn next.

“Evening,” Nat said, as she looked straight into the small red light, willing her voice to remain calm. She told herself she had nothing to fear, nothing to hide. Her eyes were the same as the rest.

The officer was roughly her age—sixteen. He had a row of pimples across his forehead, but his tone was world-weary. Tired as an old man. He kept the beam focused on her eyes until she had no choice but to blink and he had to start over.

“Sorry,” she said, crossing her arms against her chest and struggling to keep her breathing steady. Why was it taking so long? Did he see something she didn’t? She would hunt down the lockhead who’d conjured her rets if he’d proven her false.

The officer finally switched off the light.

“Everything all right?” she asked, as she flipped her long dark hair over one shoulder.

“Perfect.” He leaned closely to read her name tag. “Natasha Kestal. Pretty name for a pretty girl.”

“You’re too kind.” She smiled, thankful for the invisible gray lenses that allowed her to pass the scan.

Nat had gotten the job with fake papers and a favor, and as they waved her through to the employee lockers so she could change into a clean uniform and get back to work, she thanked the unseen stars above, because for now, she was safe.

2

“I CAN’T TAKE THIS JOB.” WES PUSHED the slim manila folder across the table without opening it. Sixteen, with soft, sandy-brown hair and warm brown eyes, he was muscular but lean and wearing a tattered down vest over a threadbare sweater and torn jeans. His face was hard, but his eyes were kind—although more often than not he had a smirk on his face.

He had one now. Wes knew all he needed to about the assignment just from the words PACIFIC RECON typed in boldface Courier across the cover. Lately all the work was in the black waters. There was nothing else. He sighed, leaning back on the plush leather chair. He had been looking forward to a real meal, but the chances of that were slim now that he’d turned down the offer. There were white tablecloths and real silverware. But it was still inside a gambling hall and every corner blinked with tiny lights as slots clinked and beeped and coins dropped into buckets.

Wes was from New Vegas and found the sound of casino clamor soothing. The Loss was still recovering from that spectacular bombing that had torn the place in half a few weeks before. A grid of gas heaters were strung across the ceiling as a temporary fix; their fiery glow the only defense against the never-ending winter outside. Snow was coming down hard, and Wes watched the dense flakes vaporize, each flake sizzling like oil in a frying pan as it hit the grid. He brushed back his hair as an errant snowflake drifted through the mesh to land on his nose.

He shivered—he never could get used to the cold; even as a boy he’d been teased for being too warm-blooded. He was wearing several layers of shirts underneath his sweater, the ghetto way to keep warm when you couldn’t afford self-heating clothing powered by a fusion battery. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I can’t.”

Bradley ignored him and motioned the waitress over. “Two steaks. Tuscan style, Wagyu. The biggest you got,” he ordered. “I like my beef massaged,” he told Wes.

Beef was a rarity, unaffordable to the general population. Sure, there was a lot of meat around—whale, walrus, reindeer, if you could stomach it—but only the heat-elite ate beef anymore. Especially since the only cattle left were nurtured in expensive temperature-controlled stables. The cow that died to make his steak probably lived a better life than he did, Wes thought. It had probably been warm.

He locked eyes with his dinner companion. “You need another CEO kidnapped? I’m your boy. But I can’t do this.”

As a former Marine sergeant, Wes had headed one of the most sought-after mercenary teams in the city. Correction: one of the formerly most sought-after teams. He’d done well in the casino wars until he got on the bad side of one of the bosses for refusing to torch a rival’s hotel during Mardi Gras. Since then, all the work came from the secret divisions of the military: protection, intimidation, kidnapping and rescue (more often than not Wes found himself on both sides). He’d been hoping for one of those gigs.

“Wesson, be reasonable,” Bradley said, his voice icy. “You know you need this job. Take it. You’re one of the best we’ve ever had, especially after that victory in Texas. Shame you left us so soon. I’ve got a hundred guys champing at the bit to take this gig, but I thought I’d throw you a bone. Heard you haven’t worked in a while.”

Wes smiled, acknowledging the truth of the man’s words. “Except some assignments aren’t worth the trouble,” he said. “Even I need to be able to sleep at night.” He’d learned as much from his stint in the army, especially after what happened in Santonio.

“These marked factions who resist treatment and registration continue to pose a danger, and they need to be dealt with accordingly,” the older man said. “Look what they did to this place.”

Wes grunted. Sure looked like they found someone to do the casino hit he’d turned down, but what did he know. He only knew as much as the rest of them—that after the ice came, dark hair and dark eyes were the norm, and the rare blue- or green- or yellow-eyed babies were born with strange marks on their bodies.

Mages’ marks, the gypsies whispered, fortune-tellers who read palms and tarot in Vegas’s dark alleys. It’s started. Others will come out of the ice and into our world.

This is the end.

The end of the beginning. The beginning of the end.

The marked children could do things—read minds, make things move without touching them, sometimes even predict the future. Enchanters, they were called, warlocks, “lockheads” and “chanters” in the popular slang.

The others who came out of the ice were smallmen, grown men the size of toddlers who were gifted with rare talents for survival, able to hide in plain sight or forage for food where none could be found; sylphs, a race of beings of luminous beauty and awesome power, it was said their hair was the color of the sun that was no more and their voices were the sound of the birds that no longer flew across the land; and finally the terrifying drau—silver-haired sylphs with white eyes and dark purpose. Drau were said to be able to kill with their minds alone, that their very hearts were made of ice.

The smallmen were rumored to live openly with their taller brethren in New Pangaea, but the sylphs and the drau kept to themselves, hidden in their remote mountain glaciers. Many doubted they truly existed, as very few had ever seen one.

In the past, the military had drafted the marked into its ranks, along with an elusive sylph or a smallman or two, but ever since that program ended in abject failure during the battle for Texas, government policy evolved to its current state of registration, containment, and blame. The marked were deemed dangerous, and people were taught to fear them.

But Wes was a Vegas native, and the city had always been a conglomeration of misfits living peacefully together for more than a hundred years since the world had been buried in sheets of ice. “It’s not that I don’t need the work, I do,” he said. “But not this.”

The stern-faced captain reached for the folder and flipped it open, paging through the documents. “I don’t see what the problem is,” he said, sliding it back across the table. “We’re not asking for much, just someone to lead the hired guns to clean up the rubbish in the Pacific. Someone like you, who knows the lay of the land—or the lay of the water, so to speak.”

The price was good, and Wes had done dangerous work before, sure, running people in and out of the Trash Pile, no questions asked. As Bradley said, he knew his way around the ruined seas, playing coyote to citizens seeking illegal passage all the way to the Xian Empire; or if they were particularly delusional, they’d ask him to find the Blue, the fabled nirvana that the pilgrims sought and no one had ever found, least of all Wes. But lately work had dried up for runners, as fewer and fewer chose to brave the difficulty of a dire ocean crossing, and even Wes was having second thoughts about his calling. He was desperate, and Bradley knew it.

“Come on, you haven’t even opened the folder,” his former captain said. “At least check out the mission.”

Wes sighed, opened the folder, and skimmed through the document. The text was redacted, black bars covered most of the words, but he got the gist of the assignment.

It was just as he’d guessed.

Dirty work.

Murder.

The waitress swung back with a couple of beers in frosted, oversize mugs. Bradley knocked his back while Wes finished reading the pages. This wasn’t his usual operation, a one-way ticket into the Pile where if anyone got hurt it was him and his boys. He could deal with that. A good run could keep his team out of the food lines for a month.

This was different. He’d done a lot to survive, but he wasn’t a paid killer.

Bradley waited patiently. No smile, no change in expression. His shirt was tucked a little too tight, hair clipped a little too short for a civilian. Even out of uniform, he had military written all over him. But the United States of America was not what it once was—no wonder everyone called it the “Remaining States of America” instead. The RSA: a handful of surviving states, and aside from its massive military machine that kept gobbling up new terrain, the country had nothing else and was hocked lock, stock, and barrel to its debtors.

The captain smiled as he wiped the froth from his lips. “Cakewalk, right?”

Wes shrugged as he closed the folder. Bradley was a hard man, one who wouldn’t blink twice before giving a kill order. Most of the time Wes followed those orders. But not this time.

In any other world, Wes might have grown up to be something else: a musician maybe, or a sculptor, a carpenter, someone who worked with his hands. But he lived in this world, in New Vegas; he had a team that counted on him, and he was cold and hungry.

When the waitress came back, she was wheeling a silver cart holding two wide platters, each one bearing a fat steak, charred on top and dripping juice over a bed of mashed potatoes. The smell of melted butter and smoke was tantalizing.

It was a far cry from the MRSs he was used to: Meals Ready to Squeeze. It was all he and his boys could afford lately: pizza squeezers, Thanksgiving dinner in a can. Some of it wasn’t even food, it came out of aerosol containers; you sprayed it directly into your mouth and called it dinner. Wes couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a hamburger, much less a steak, that smelled this good.

“So, you taking the job or not? Listen, these are hard times. Don’t sweat it. Everyone needs to eat. You should be thanking me for this opportunity. I came to you first.”

Wes shook his head, tried to get the smell of the steak out of his mind. “I told you, try someone else. You’ve got the wrong guy,” he said.

If Bradley thought he could buy him for the price of a meal, he was wrong. Wes styled himself after Paleolithic hunters he’d learned about in school, who kept their eyes trained on the horizon, always scanning, always searching for that elusive prize that would mean survival. But the tribesmen would fast for days rather than consume the meat of sacred animals. Wes liked that idea; it allowed him feel better about himself, that he wasn’t a vulture, one of those people who would do anything for a heat lamp. Wes didn’t have much, but he had his integrity.

The army captain scowled. “You really want me to send this back to the kitchen? I bet you haven’t eaten anything but mush for weeks.”

“Throw it in the garbage, what do I care,” Wes said as he tossed the folder back across the table.

Bradley straightened his lapels and shot him a withering look. “Get used to starving then.”

3

THE CASINO WAS BUZZING AS USUAL WHEN Nat arrived for work that evening. It had never even closed, not for a day, not for an hour; management didn’t care that there was a hole in the roof as long as the slot machines kept ringing. She nodded to Old Joe as she walked in and the wizened card shark smiled in greeting, his eyes disappearing into his cheeks. Joe was an anomaly, a rare bird, a man who had lived past his fiftieth birthday. He was also a legend at the casinos. Supposedly he’d been one of the smartest and most successful card sharks, and one of the most elusive—he’d brought down many a gambling hall, decimating coffers, staying just one step ahead of security. When he made his way to the Strip, the Loss offered him a job on the inside, rather than watch him walk away with their profits.

“You remind me of my niece who died in ’Tonio,” Joe had said when he’d hired her right off the felt, a skinny, starving thing who was on a winning streak at the poker tables. “She was like you—too smart for her own good.” Joe made her the same deal he gave all his fellow card counters. Work for me, help us turn in the other pros, I’ll give you a decent salary and keep you from getting beat up by the casino goons. He didn’t ask any questions about how she came to Vegas or what she was doing before, but he’d made good on his word, and got her set up.

Ask him, the voice ordered. Ask him about the stone. Do what we came here for. You have delayed long enough. The Map has been found, the voice kept telling her. Hurry, it is time.

What map? she had asked, even if she had a feeling she already knew the answer. The pilgrims called it Anaximander’s Map; it was said to provide safe passage through the rocky, perilous waters of Hell Strait to the island doorway that led to the Blue.

“Joe?” she asked. “You got a sec?”

“What’s up?”

“Can we talk privately?”

“Sure,” he said, motioning that she should follow him to a quiet corner, where a group of tourists were robotically feeding credits into the video poker stations. The smell of smoke was overpowering, and it reminded her of her dreams.

Joe crossed his meaty arms. “What’s on your mind?”

“What is that?” she asked, pointing to the stone he wore around his wrinkled neck. The one she had noticed the first time they had met, the one that the voice in her head demanded she ask him about the moment she had set foot in the city, and in this casino. She had put off the voice for as long as she could, fearing what would happen if she did as she was told.

“This?” the old man asked, lifting the stone to the light, where it shone brightly against the dim cocoon of the gambling hall.

That is the one! Take it! Take the stone. Kill him if you must. It is ours! The voice was frenetic, excited, she could feel the monster’s need thrumming in her veins.

“No!” she said aloud, shocking herself and startling a nearby gambler who dropped her token.

“What?” Joe asked, still admiring the shining stone.

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s pretty.”

“I won it at a card game a while back,” he said with a dismissive wave. “It’s supposed to be some kind of map, but it’s nothing.”

Take it! Take it! Take it from him!

“Can I hold it?” she asked, her voice quavering.

“Sure,” Joe said, slowly removing it from his neck. He hesitated for a moment before handing it to her. It was warm in her palm.

She studied the small blue stone in her hand. It was the weight and color of a sapphire, a round stone with a circle in the middle of it. She put it up to her eye and jumped back, startled.

“What happened? You see something?” Joe asked excitedly.

“No—no . . . nothing,” Nat lied. For a moment, the casino had disappeared and through the hole in the stone, all she could see was blue water, shimmering and clean. She peered into it again. There it was. Blue water.

That wasn’t all. Upon closer inspection she saw there was more, an image of a charted course, a jagged line between obstacles, a way forward, through the rocky and whirlpool waters of the Hellespont Strait.

The stone contains the map to Arem, the doorway to Vallonis, the voice murmured reverently.

This was why the voice had led her to New Vegas, to the Loss, and to Joe. It had facilitated her escape, it had brought her freedom, and it was relentlessly pushing her forward.

Come to me.

You are mine.

It is time we are one.

“There’s nothing,” she told Joe.

His shoulders slumped. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. It’s just a fake.”

She closed her fist around it, unsure of what would happen next, afraid of what she’d do if Joe asked for it back and hoping that he wouldn’t.

She stared down the casino boss. The monster in her head was seething. What are you waiting for! Take it and run! Kill him if he stops you!

“Give it to me,” she whispered, and somehow she knew he would do as told.

Joe flinched as if she’d hurt him. “Keep it,” he said finally, and walked away from her quickly.

Nat leaned against the wall in relief, glad for Joe’s sake that he had given it freely.

Later that evening she was awoken by the sound of a scuffle. Joe lived two rooms down from her, and she heard them—military police? Casino security? Bounty hunters? Whoever had come had kicked open his door and was taking him from his bed. She heard the old man begging, screaming and crying, but no one came to his aid. No neighbors dared to peer down the hallway, no one even asked what the matter was. Tomorrow no one would talk about what happened either, or what they had heard. Joe would simply be gone, and nothing more would be said. She huddled in her thick blankets as she heard them tearing his room apart, throwing open closet doors, upending tables, looking . . . looking . . . for something . . . for the cold blue stone that she now held in her hand?

If they had found Joe, it wouldn’t be long before they found her as well.

Then what? She could not look back, she had nothing to go back to, but if she kept moving forward . . . She shuddered, and her mouth tasted of ashes and cinder.

She held the stone in her hand. The map to Arem, doorway to Vallonis.

From the window, she saw them take Joe away in a straitjacket, and she knew what awaited her if she stayed. They would send her back to where she came from, back to those solitary rooms, back to those dark assignments.

No. She could not stay. She had to leave New Vegas, and soon.

What are you waiting for?

4

HIS MOTHER HAD BEEN A SHOWGIRL. One of the prettiest in the business, his dad had liked to say, and Wes was sure he was right. Dad had been a cop. They were good people, fine citizens of New Vegas. Neither of them was still alive, each succumbing to the big C years ago. Cancer was a disease that was a matter of when, not why, and his parents had been no exception. But Wes knew they had died long before; they were empty shells after what happened to Eliza. His little sister whom no one could save.

He had his parents to thank for his good looks and his sharp wits, but not much else. As Wes walked away from the four-star meal, he was angry with himself for turning down Bradley’s offer, but angrier that it was the only avenue open to the likes of him. He could starve, he had starved before, but he hated the boys going hungry. They were the only family he had left.

When he was little, his mother would make him tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. It didn’t happen often—she worked late nights and wasn’t usually awake when he was home from school. But once in a while, she would appear, last night’s makeup faint on her cheeks, smelling of perfume and sweat, and she would turn on the stove and the smell of butter—real butter, she always insisted they save up for it—would fill their small house.

The sandwich would be gooey on the inside and crisp on the outside and the soup—thin and red—was tart and flavorful, even if it was from a can. Wes wondered if he missed his mother or those sandwiches more. She had hid her disease from them, beneath the makeup. She had worked until the end, and one day, had doubled over, vomiting blood backstage. Dead in a matter of days.

Dad had tried to keep it together for a while, and his girlfriends—cocktail waitresses with outlaw accents, the occasional lap-girl from the clubs—(his mother would never have approved, she was a performer, a dancer, not a cheap grab-and-grope-girl) had been kind to Wes, but it was never the same.

When his father died in hospice, a shriveled twenty-nine-year-old man, Wes was orphaned.

He was nine years old and alone.

The world had ended long before the snows came, his father liked to say. It had ended after the Great Wars, ended after the Black Floods, the Big Freeze only the latest catastrophe. The world was always ending. The point was to survive whatever came next.

Wes had promised his boys work, had promised them food, had promised them they would eat tonight. He had also promised himself he would never go back there, never do anything so stupid and dangerous again. But there he was. Back at the death races, so named because to drive one of the beat-up jalopies in the game was to risk everything. The tracks ran through the carcasses of old casinos on the street level. The cars were patched-up wrecks with souped-up engines, although once in a while they were able to find an old Ferrari or a Porsche with an engine that could still zoom.

“Thought you said you were done,” said Dre, the gangster who ran the track, when he saw Wes.

“Things change,” Wes said grimly. “How much?”

“Ten if you win, nickel if you place. Nothing if you don’t.”

“Fine.” He’d always been good at being fast. He could drive fast, he could run fast, he even talked fast. In a way, it was a relief to do something that came easily to him.

Wes got in a car. No helmet, no seat belt. No rules except to try to stay alive, to try not to crash into one of the walls, or into the glass panels, or to flip off the ice onto another car. The cars were named for the great racehorses of old. Ajax. Man o’ War. Cigar. Barbaro. Secretariat. He looked up at the boards that would broadcast the race to the OTB network—his odds were low and he felt gratified at that, that the bookies remembered him, that they bet that he would live. When the checkered flag was raised, Wes revved up the engine and flew down the course.

The course took him past the city’s relics, the Olden Ugg, Rah’s, and R Queens, ending on the corner where the neon cowboy waved his hat.

There were a few cars ahead of him, and Wes decided to keep up with the pack, make his move on the final round, best not to be the lead car—somehow the lead always ended up in fourth place. Finally, it was time. Only one more car in front of him. The yellow flag was flying, meaning to use caution; the ice was probably more slippery than usual. He slammed the gas pedal and muscled his way to the lead. The other driver saw it coming and tried to block his way, but his wheels slipped on the ice and his car slammed against Wes’s, sending both of them against the wall. Wes’s car scraped the ice on its right wheels, and flipped up once, twice, and he hit his head on the roof and fell back to his seat with a crash. The other car was a fireball at the end of the lane, but since his own car was still running, Wes gunned the engine and the car reared up and shot across the finish line.

The race was over. The engine finally died, sputtering, the wheels spinning on ice, but it was all right.

He’d survived.

Wes slid out through the window, his cheeks red, his heart pumping. That was close. Too close. For a moment there he hadn’t thought he’d make it.

“Nice work. See you tomorrow?”

Wes shook his head as he counted the hard-won watts in his hand, barely enough to buy the boys dinner. He couldn’t do this again. He would have to think of another way to feed his crew. His friend Carlos at the Loss owed him one. After all, Wes had refused to torch the place earlier in the year, and it wasn’t his fault their rivals had found someone else to take the job. Maybe it was time to try his luck at the casino tables again.

In Vegas, there was always another game.

5

“HEY, MANNY,” NAT CALLED, MOTIONING to her pit boss.

“Yeah?” Manny counted out a roll of five hundred watts as he approached. There was the New Vegas that was run by the real-estate overlords and their ambiguous military connections, and then there was the Vegas that was still Vegas—run by the mob, by the gangsters, by people like Manny, who kept the place packed, the patrons happy, the drinks potent.

“You know anyone with a connection to a ship?” she whispered. “A runner?”

Manny shook his head and wet his finger with his tongue, continuing to count the money. “Why you wanna leave New Veg? You just got here. This is the best place around,” he said, motioning to the busy casino. “Where else is there?”

The man had a point. After the world ended, in a rush to dominate the earth’s remaining resources, the country had expanded its borders, colonizing and renaming regions as it did so. Africa became New Rhodes, Australia divided into Upper Pangaea and New Crete, South America—a wasteland called simply Nuevo Residuos. There were a few independent sectors left, like the Xian Empire, of course, the only country that had the foresight to preserve its agricultural industry by spearheading the indoor-farming movement before the ice came. But what was left of the rest of the world—swaths of Russia and most of Europe—was overrun by pirates and led by madmen.

Visas were more expensive than a working space heater, more costly than clean water. Acquiring one was near impossible, not to mention the endless blizzards that made travel precarious and expensive.

Nat shrugged. “C’mon, Manny, you know everyone in this snow globe.” She had asked around, but her dealer friends laughed in her face. They all did, from the valets from Nuevo Cabo, to the waitresses from Mesa Sol, to the topless dancers from nearby Henderson. There was no way. They all told her to forget about it, those who tried to jump the borders were crazy, and you never saw them again. The only thing the Vegas hands knew was that jumpers were unlucky, and unlucky had no place in the casinos.

The pit boss tucked the roll into his back pocket, sucked his teeth, and worked a toothpick through his molars. “No, baby. Not gonna happen, don’t want to see you shot in the head, floating in that black water. There’s pirates—scavengers—out there, too, don’t you know? Taking slaves, selling ’em to the outlaw territories.” He shook his head. “Besides, remember what happened to Joe? Bounty hunters find out you’re itching to jump, they’ll turn you in for the reward for snitching.” That was what everyone believed—that Joe had been turned in for blood money. Jumper watt, someone had snitched. “Besides, you need mucho credit to pay a runner.”

She sighed, counting her small stack. Tips had been steady all evening. She had almost twenty credits, not enough for a proper heat suit, but maybe a pair of those seal-fur gloves or a cup of real chicken soup. She dealt the next hand. All day she’d had a good, steady stream of players, a group celebrating a bachelor party, a few pros who made their living from the tables.

“Slow night?” a voice asked.

Nat looked up to see a guy standing across from her. Tall, with caramel-colored hair and honey-brown eyes. He smiled and she thought she recognized him from somewhere. Her breath caught at the sight of his handsome face, with his kind eyes and somewhat familiar mien. She swore she knew him but couldn’t remember where from. He was dressed in layers, and she noted the worn edges of his sleeves, and the burns on his jeans that could only have come from driving the blood tracks. She didn’t think she knew any of the death-wish boys, but she could be wrong. Whoever he was, she sensed mischief from the way he hovered around the edges of her table.

“Can I deal you in?” she asked in her crisp dealer tone. “If not, you’ll have to step back. Casino rules, sorry.”

“Maybe. What’s the ante?” he drawled, even though the neon sign was blinking on the table. Fifty heat credits to play.

She pointed at it with a frown.

“That all?” he asked, all smooth and suave. “Maybe I’ll stay, make sure these clowns here don’t give you a hard time.” He smiled as he motioned to the players seated around her table.

“I can take care of myself, thanks,” Nat said coolly. She knew the type. She had no patience for pretty boys. He probably broke a dozen hearts just by walking across the casino floor. If he thought she would be one of them, he was wrong.

“I’m sure you can,” he said, shooting her a sideways grin. “What time do you get out of here? What say you and I . . .”

“My shift ends at midnight,” she said, cutting him off. “You got enough to buy me a glass of water, I’ll meet you at the bar.”

“Water. A purist.” He winked. “My kind of girl. Done.”

She laughed. There was no way he could afford a glass of water. He couldn’t even afford a proper winter coat. Clean water was precious but synthetics were cheap and sanitary, so like most solid citizens, her only choice was to drink Nutri, a supposedly vitamin-and-nutrient-rich, sweet-tasting concoction that was spiked with faint traces of mood stabilizers, just the thing to keep the population obedient. The chemicals gave her a headache, and more than anything, she just wanted a taste of pure, clear water. Once a week she saved up enough for a glass, savoring every drop.

“Hey, man, either you’re in or you’re out. Holding up the game here,” a young day-tripper snarled, interrupting. He was a flashy kind, the type of player who tried to flirt with the dealer or when that didn’t work, complained loudly whenever someone made a move he didn’t approve of—“That was my ace!” or “You’re messing up the shuffle.”

“Relax, relax,” the new boy said, but he didn’t take a step back.

“Sir, I’m really going to have to ask you to move,” she told him, as she laid down her hand. Eighteen. She made to collect the players’ chips.

“Twenty-one! Woot!” crowed the annoying player.

Nat stared at his cards. She could have sworn he’d held a ten and a six, but now his six of spades was an ace of clubs. How did that happen? Was he a lockhead? A hidden mage? Had he figured out a way to cheat the iron detectors as she had? She sucked in her breath as she calculated his bet, which meant a payout of— She shook her head. No way. No one was that lucky. The house always wins.

“What are you waiting for, girly? Pay out!” He slapped the table and the chips wobbled on the felt.

He was a cheat, she was sure of it, even as she began to count out four platinum chips on the green felt, and she hesitated before pushing them his way.

“I’m sorry, I’m going to have to ask for a rollback,” she said, meaning she’d have to ask security to check the cameras, make sure nothing funny had happened. But when she looked around, Manny and the other supervisors were nowhere to be found. What was going on?

“Pay out, or else,” the kid said in a low, menacing voice.

Now Nat saw that he was holding a gun underneath his jacket, and it was pointed right at her.

Before she could protest, there was a swift and sudden movement, as the handsome boy slammed the guy facedown on the table and pinned his arms behind his back, effectively disarming him in one go.

Nat watched with grudging admiration as he reached into the thief’s pocket. “Beretta. Old-school, good taste,” he said, laying the gun on the felt. He emptied the other one and a flurry of aces fell to the carpet. Nat understood now. The kid had used her interest in the good-looking boy to switch the cards and win the chips.

The chips . . .

Four platinum ones.

Equal to twenty thousand heat credits. Enough to pay a runner, enough to hire a ship. Enough to get her out of here . . .

She looked up and caught her newfound hero’s eye and they stared at each other for a heartbeat.

When she looked down at the table again, the chips were gone.

The handsome boy blinked, confused.

“Here,” Nat said, slipping a few plastic chips into his hand. She thought of those warm gloves she’d been saving up for. “For your trouble.”

“Save it for that glass of water,” he said, giving her chips back and walking toward the exit.

6

WES MOVED QUICKLY THROUGH THE CASINO, annoyed with himself. The platinum chips were right there. Four of them, equal to twenty thousand watts, his for the taking. So why didn’t he have them?

It had gone down perfectly at first. He had hooked the dealer with his line, saw how she lit up when he smiled, and Daran had executed the play to the letter with that shady ace. Caused a commotion, and in the process allowed Wes ample time to take four of those platinum chips while the dealer’s attention was focused elsewhere.

Except Wes hadn’t taken them and he was going back to the rendezvous empty-handed. He frowned as he scissored his way through the slow-moving crowd on the way to Mark Antony’s. All he’d had to do was slip those fancy chips into his pocket and they would have eaten like kings tonight. But he had hesitated, and then they were gone, vanished in the blink of an eye.

The walkway was full of hustlers peddling their wares, handing out cards and flyers, their good-time gals casting sultry looks at anyone who came by.

“What’s wrong, handsome? I can make you feel better,” the nearest one promised. “Or you can do the same for me . . .”

Wes found his crew assembled at the base of the Bacchus statue at the Forum Shops-in-the-Sky. They looked up at him eagerly. Daran wasn’t there yet, but he would be okay. Carlos would take care of him.

“How’d it go, boss?” Shakes asked. The scruffy, goateed beanpole of a soldier was his right-hand man, and had been with Wes since their grunt days. They were like brothers. Shakes was solid, a rock, despite his name. He was a veteran like Wes, with a survivor’s stoic determination. Shakes had been more than displeased the other night to hear that Wes had been back at the tracks. I didn’t save your butt in Santonio just so you could throw your life away as a death jockey. He looked at Wes hopefully, but Wes shook his head.

“What happened?” Farouk whined. He was the youngest of the crew, all nose and elbows, a scrawny, twitchy kid with a bottomless appetite.

Wes was about to explain when Daran and Zedric came running up the walkway. The brothers were dressed identically, in the same tan windbreaker, the same dark slacks, the same shaggy dark hair and piercing black eyes. If Daran had been recognized by security, Zedric would have stepped in to play the part of the thief.

Unlike Shakes, the rest of the team were new hires. Daran and Zedric Slaine and Farouk Jones. Farouk was thirteen going on thirty, a blabbermouth—he never stopped talking even when he didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about—he was an expert on every topic with no experience to back it up. Dar and Zed were only a year apart, but Daran treated his younger brother like a kid. They’d been booted from the army before they could be eligible for full post-service benefits, which was routine military policy these days. Cut ’em loose before they get too expensive. Typical soldiers, they were brash, potty-mouthed, and hotheaded, but they were also dead shots who were handy in a firefight.

“How much?” Daran asked. “How’d we do?”

“Came up snake eyes, sorry,” Wes told him.

Daran cursed long and creatively. He sneered at Wes. “You holding out on us?”

“I swear to god—I got nothing,” Wes said, returning his gun.

Daran yanked it back furiously. “What d’you mean you don’t have it? I had that golden. It was all there! All you had to do was reach out and take those chips!”

Wes looked around, people were beginning to notice, and while the sky patrols were giving them a wide berth, they would be moving in soon if the boys continued to make too much noise. “Keep your voices down. They were on to me. I couldn’t blow Carlos’s cover.”

“No way! They knew nothing! I’m not buying it!” Daran protested. “And Carlos is expecting his two thousand hot.”

“Let me take care of Carlos.”

“So there’s nothing to eat?” Farouk asked again. “Nothing?”

“Not unless you like glop,” Zedric intoned darkly, glaring at Wes. “I’m not going back to that food line—it’s humiliating.”

Shakes nodded. He didn’t accuse, he didn’t complain. He clapped Wes on the shoulder. “You can do this in your sleep. We’ve run that play a hundred times. What happened?”

Wes sighed. “I told you, I felt the eyes on us. I spooked.”

He didn’t want to tell them the truth, didn’t even want to admit it to himself.

What had happened?

The blackjack dealer was beautiful, with long dark hair and luminous, fair skin. She had none of that bronzed hardness that was so popular now among the New Veg snow bunnies, with their dark-orange tans and bleached hair, a desperate attempt to look as if one could afford to travel to the enclosed cities where an artificial sun provided heat and light.

But it wasn’t that she was pretty. It was that she was on to him.

Right at the moment, right when his hand was hovering over the platinum chips to take them away, she had caught his eye and stopped him with a look that said, Don’t even think about it.

She hadn’t been fooled by his theatrical heroics or distracted by his flirtatious banter. Not for a second. She knew what they were doing. What he was doing. That he was a fraud, and no hero.

Wes had backed off, startled. The moment was lost, and when he looked down the chips had disappeared. She must have put them back on the casino stack. It was cute how she tried to tip him, too, as if a few heat credits could make up for his loss.

“Come on,” Daran said to his brother. “Let’s go see if we can do better with the play at the Apple,” he said. “I’ll play the hero this time, get it done right,” he said to Wes.

“Can I come?” Farouk asked.

“Sure—you can be lookout,” Daran said. “Shakes—you in? We might need you for muscle; they don’t know us as well at the Apple.”

Shakes looked at Wes and sighed. “Nah, I’ll catch up with you guys later.”

“Suit yourself,” Daran said.

“You’re going to lose them if you can’t feed them,” Shakes said when the boys had left. “Then what? Without a crew we can’t run any type of play.”

Wes nodded. They would have to leave the city, or join up again, something. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Then he wouldn’t have the luxury of turning down his assignments.

“Something will come up,” Wes said. “Want to try our luck at the lines?” It was humbling, but they had to eat.

“Yeah—why not,” Shakes grumped. They walked through the casino, past the food courts, a myriad of treats available but not to the likes of them. Noodle shops, crepe stands, chic cafés serving coffees and tea sandwiches, five-star gourmet restaurants where reservations had to be booked months in advance. There were floor-to-ceiling tanks, brimming with exotic fish domestically farmed in saltwater pools—pick one and they’d slice it into sashimi while you waited.

Another restaurant boasted delicacies beyond imagination. Quail, pheasant, wild boar, everything organic, grass-fed, free-range. (Where did they range? Wes wondered. He’d heard that the heated enclosures were vast, but how vast could they be?) The tropical fruit display was the hardest to ignore. The colors alone made him stop and stare. He knew the bright reds and yellows were genetically modified for maximum saturation, but it was still a gorgeous sight. The fruit was stored under heavy glass, like diamonds of old, but the shops always left out a few trays to tease passersby with their flowery scent. They passed a chocolate shop selling handmade artisanal candy that cost more than the two of them put together (hired guns had nothing on small-batch truffles).

The food line was about to close, but they made it there in time. As they sat down with their bowls of cheap gruel, Shakes’s pocket began to vibrate. He picked up his phone. “Valez,” he answered. “Uh-huh? Yeah? Okay, I’ll tell him.” He flipped it closed.

“What was that all about?” Wes asked, slurping from his spoon and trying not to retch.

Shakes grinned. “Looks like we got us a job. Some chick’s looking to hire a runner and they hear she’s got credits to burn.”

7

NAT STARED AT THE FOUR PLATINUM CHIPS in her locker. She tried to make them disappear and reappear in her pocket as she had the day before, when she’d nicked them from her table. Casino security was convinced the thief had somehow made off with them, although they didn’t know how. There was nothing on the tapes. She focused on the chips, but nothing happened. They stayed on the metal shelf, unmoving. It was a shame that a mages’ mark wasn’t of much use to anyone, especially the marked themselves. While it had come in handy during a few tough situations, Nat had no idea how to use her power or how to control it; like the voice in her head, it came and went without warning, and if she tried to summon it directly, it was even more elusive. She could feel the monster inside her, feel its anger, impatience, and power; but it came and went like the wind and could abandon her at any moment. Days like today she almost agreed with the zealots on the nets. That the mark was a curse.

She had put feelers out for a runner yesterday, letting people know that she could pay, that she had gotten lucky on a bet, but so far no one had bitten. She put the chips back in her pocket, feeling reassured by their weight next to the small blue stone. If she played her cards right, together they were her ticket out of the city.

At her table her predecessor, Angela, was in the middle of performing the ending ritual—clapping her hands and turning empty palms toward the ceiling to indicate to surveillance that her shift was over.

“You heard about the new ret scans?” Angela asked. She gathered her things and let Nat slide behind the table. “You know, to root out lockhead lenses?”

“Yeah,” Nat said.

“Good thing, can’t have any of that filth around,” Angie sniffed. “You know what they’re calling them now? Rotheads. Get it?”

“Right,” Nat said, averting her eyes. She’d heard the rumors but she didn’t believe them—had never seen any proof to the stories—and she should know. Just more lies and propaganda, just another way to keep the public fearful and submissive.

She dealt the cards but her players left one by one until there was only one guy at her table. It was Thursday, the day before payday, when everyone was poor. Tomorrow the casino would be filled with crowds angling to cash in their paychecks, some of them tossing down their stubs right on the gaming tables. Occasionally someone got lucky, betting it all on some hunch, riding the streak, beating the house at every turn. But that was like having your number come up for a visa to Xian. It hardly ever happened, and when it did, security was on the table so quickly your luck was gone before you knew it.

Nat shuffled the deck, letting the cards make a satisfying rippling sound as they moved from one hand to the other like an accordion, before dealing the next round.

The remaining player at her table was a sloe-eyed boy with a wisp of a beard on his chin, sporting scary-looking tats on his brown arms. A veteran for sure, a bruiser, a bodyguard on his day off, Nat thought. Then the boy smiled, and Nat was struck by how suddenly young he looked, how innocent, even with a malevolent hissing snake on his forearm.

She motioned for him to cut the cards.

The dark-haired boy squinted at her name tag as he did so. “Hi, Nat. I’m Vincent Valez. But everyone calls me Shakes. Oh and I forgot to give you this earlier.” He handed over a worn-out food provision card, his fingers trembling a little, a telltale sign of frostblight. The human body wasn’t meant to live in subzero weather. Most people ended up with a few tremors, while the unluckiest ones lost their eyesight.

“You know we’re not supposed to take these anymore,” she said as she swiped the card through a reader. Everyone in the country was given a Fo-Pro card, which entitled the bearer to the necessary sustenance—powdered soy milk, protein squares, the occasional sugar substitute—the government’s one concession to public welfare, one step above the charity food lines. The cards weren’t supposed to be valid anywhere but the Market Stations, but in New Vegas, anything could be traded for casino chips.

“But I’ll make an exception,” she told him, as his visible disability was hard to ignore.

A few more players took seats at her table and a waitress in a skimpy dress sailed by. “Cocktails?” she sang in a breathy voice.

While the rest of the table placed their order, Nat dealt the next hand, the cards flying off the deck to each spot on their own. She looked around, relieved no one had noticed, and wondered how long it would take them to realize she had no business working in a casino.

Somehow, the ace landed on Shakes’s place, and she watched as he made a killing.

“Thanks.” He winked.

“For what?” She shrugged. If only she could do that all the time.

Shakes leaned over, a little too closely.

Nat regarded him warily, worried that he read too much into his earlier win.

“Heard you’re looking for transport. You serious about getting out?” he asked.

She looked around, then nodded imperceptibly. “Ryan Wesson?”

Ryan Wesson. It was the one name that had come up again and again when she’d asked if anyone knew a runner. Well, if anyone can get you out of here, it’s Wes. Wes has got the fastest ship in the Pacific. He’ll get you where you need to go.

Shakes took a sip from his mug. “Not by a long shot,” he said, grinning. “But I do speak for him.”

“Looking for Wesson?” asked a veteran at the table who had been eavesdropping on their conversation.

Nat nodded.

The toothless boy laughed a bitter laugh. “You know where you can find him, miss? Hell. After Santonio, that’s where he should be.”

“Hey, man, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shakes retorted, his face turning red. “You weren’t there, you don’t know what went down.”

Nat didn’t have time for arguments. In a few minutes, Manny would move her to the next table as Shakes had won big on his next hand as well. She had to ask now before she got pulled out of there. Who knew if she would ever get another chance?

Waiting until the eavesdropper turned to the waitress to order a drink, Nat leaned in and whispered, “Look, I don’t care what happened in Texas, I hear he’s the only one who can get me past the fence and into the water.” She pushed his winnings toward him. “So will he do it? I need to leave as soon as possible.”

Shakes waved off the chips, gesturing instead for more points on his Fo-Pro card. “It depends. How lucky have you been lately?”

8

“THAT HER?” WES ASKED, PEERING THROUGH night-vision ’ocs. The green screen on the binoculars showed a slim, dark-haired girl walking down the street. She wore a long dark coat and a wool cap pulled low on her forehead and a scarf that covered most of her face. He handed the glasses to Shakes, who stood next to him on the balcony.

“Yeah, that’s her.” Shakes nodded.

Wes frowned. Well, what did you know, it was the blackjack dealer from the Loss—the same one who had thrown him off his game, the reason his team had lost faith in him. “You think she’s for real?”

“Pretty sure. Couldn’t have been easy, letting me win with all those cameras around. Not really sure how she managed it in the first place.”

“Maybe she was setting you up,” Farouk called from inside the small apartment. The kid was always butting in where he wasn’t invited.

“And maybe you talk too much,” Shakes grumbled. “She’s the reason you didn’t eat goop tonight, you know.”

Farouk put his feet up on the shabby couch. “So, she let you win a few credits, so what. So we got steak for dinner.”

“Yeah, we don’t owe her nothing,” Daran agreed, taking the binoculars for a look. But he didn’t seem to recognize her from the other night.

Farouk let out a large burp and Shakes grimaced. “She can pay, and god knows we need the work.” He’d outlined her proposal to the team earlier: She needed a military escort, protection through Garbage Country, passage out to the sea as far as New Crete. She would pay them half now and the rest once they arrived at their destination.

“She’s not marked, is she?” Zedric asked. “You know we don’t mess with ice trash.”

“What did they ever do to you, man?” Wes asked, annoyed.

Zedric shrugged. “They breathe. It’s unnatural what they can do . . . they have no place in this world, and you’ve heard what they say happens to them . . .” He shivered and looked away.

“Relax, her eyes are gray,” Shakes explained.

Zedric sneered. “Rets can be faked.”

“Not easily,” Shakes argued. “I’m telling you, she’s legit.”

“Why New Crete?” Wes wanted to know. “Nothing there but penguins and polar bears.”

“You know why,” Daran said. “Probably another delusional pilgrim looking for the Blue, but she just won’t admit it.”

Wes sighed. He knew Daran had guessed correctly. There was no reason to go halfway around the world except in search of paradise. There’s nothing out there, he wanted to tell her, and looking for something that didn’t exist was a waste of time and heat credits.

Maybe he could sell her on the tent cities in Garbage Country instead. Try to talk her out of risking the black waters.

He thought of the last girl who’d asked for his help to the Blue. Juliet had also wanted out, but he’d turned her down. He wondered what happened to her; rumor had it she died during the bombing at the Loss. Jules did like her cards. He didn’t want to think about what that meant, if she was truly gone. But what else was new. Everyone he loved was dead or lost. Mom. Dad. Eliza.

“We don’t need this job, man. Remember there are things out there in the Pile. We barely made it out last time, and the water’s even worse.” Daran flexed his muscles, and the scars on his hands turned pink at the effort, souvenirs from the region’s insurrections.

Wes agreed with him. He knew what was out there. And even if they made it through Garbage Country, the corsair ships would be circling the toxic oceans, ready for fresh meat, fresh cargo for the slave holds. It was getting harder and harder to evade them.

“What’s your gut say?” Wes asked Shakes again. He trusted Shakes with his life. They’d been through a lot together since they were rooks, especially that last deployment when they were sent down to what the government called a “routine police action” and what everyone else called the Second Civil War. Texas had been the last holdout to sign the new constitution and was punished for its insurrection. What was left of the state that wasn’t covered in ice was covered in blood, its militia utterly decimated during the final battle at Santonio.

“She said she has the credits. I believe her,” Shakes said.

They were in a standard-issue apartment, in one of the new developments off the Strip. Casino dorm. Much nicer than that hovel where they bunked. Wes looked west, where the shining lights of the casinos glowed in the gray sky. In a few minutes, as it did every night, Kaboom! would play on the main stage at the Acropolis, reenacting the huge blast that had torn a crater-size hole in the Loss the other week. “Excitainment” it was called.

Wes checked his watch and looked through the binoculars at the girl again. She’d pulled off her scarf, and he could see her face clearly now.

“How much did she say?”

“Told you—twenty thousand watts—half now, half when it’s done,” replied Shakes.

Twenty thousand watts. A king’s ransom for safe passage through the Pacific. How could a lowly blackjack dealer have enough credit in her account to offer them a payday so big they wouldn’t have to work the rest of the year?

Twenty thousand watts.

Wes inhaled sharply, remembering those glittering five-thousand-credit chips on the table.

There had been exactly four of them on the stack.

He hadn’t swiped them, but somehow they had disappeared. Carlos told him that table had come up short exactly that amount, so where was his cut? Wes had told the security chief he had no idea what he was talking about, if he had it, he’d give it, and of course, Carlos hadn’t believed him. Wes had been puzzled at first, but as the week wore on it became clear that Carlos was serious, that his old friend wouldn’t cover for him. The credits were gone and he expected Wes to cough them up, favor or no. Wes would have to find a way to pay him off soon, or get out of the city if he knew what was good for him.

Wes hadn’t been sure before, hadn’t believed she had the audacity to pull it off, but now it was obvious he had underestimated the pretty dealer.

Nat hadn’t returned those chips to the casino after all—she’d taken them. Somehow, she’d intuited that the blame wouldn’t fall on her. Why not let him take the heat for it; what did she care? He was nothing to her.

Wes was impressed. He’d thought he was running a game, but he had been outplayed.

Natasha Kestal. Blackjack dealer. Pilgrim. Thief.

9

WES WAS NOT ONE TO TAKE A JOB unprepared, and he’d had Farouk check out Nat, not that there was much to find. No school records, no military ones either; she hadn’t been recruited for officer training and she hadn’t volunteered. A civilian. With no record, no online profile. As far as they could tell, she’d only arrived in New Vegas a few weeks ago.

Those credits she was offering as payment were rightfully his, Wes thought, but now she was making him work for them. He had to hand it to her—that took style.

She’d let Shakes win a few big hands as an apology, and while it would be enough to feed them for a few more days, after that, they would be hungry again. Their Fo-Pro card was fake, and it would be deactivated soon, just like the others they’d forged. They weren’t eligible for real ones, not with their records. Since he’d rejected Bradley and forsaken the death races, they were living on fumes.

“What’s the holdup? We already agreed, we’ll take the bounty, that’s a meal ticket for sure. And when we turn her in, if she’s got the chips on her, we’ll take them, too, along with whatever’s left in her apartment,” Daran argued. The military paid a reward of five hundred credits for each potential fence-hopper, and the plan was to turn her in so they could collect, as well as rob her in the process. “Pilgrims talk a big game; we’ve been taken for a ride before by people who can’t pay.”

Wes had to admit Daran was right, that was what they had agreed. It was even Wes’s idea to turn her in, but that was before he had recognized her through the binoculars.

Down on the sidewalk, Nat crossed the street and disappeared from sight.

Wes studied the glittering landscape of New Vegas, the casinos, old, new, destroyed, and refurbished. Thank god for the Hoover Dam. The fossil fuels left were only available to the military or to those who stole from or bartered with the military, but hydroelectricity let Vegas pay its electric bill.

Wes had been an errand boy for several bookies before he was ten. He understood New Vegas was a cockroach; it would endure through greed and lust. It had shrugged its sequined shoulder at the Big Freeze. Wes respected the city that had shaped him into a survivor.

He had to make a decision. Kaboom! was about to climax with a massive explosion, and the noise would be loud enough to drown out their assault. Wes looked down at the floor that was rigged with bombs, enough to create a hole in the floor and drop them through the ceiling below, where they could snatch her, haul her in for the reward, and take whatever she had on her. It was getting harder and harder to disappear someone these days; the city had cameras on every corner, every bridge; otherwise he’d have just taken her off the street.

The team looked at him for orders. He had to decide.

Farouk knelt by the complicated mess of red and green wires. It would be easy enough to patch up the hole and leave no trace of their operation. When they were done, she’d be just another missing person, a flyer on the wall of a bus stop, a photo on the back of a Nutri carton. And they would be five hundred credits richer, more if they believed Shakes.

“’Rouk?” Wes asked.

“Say the word and we can blow the joint and be inside in fifteen seconds.”

“Think she knows we’re right above her?” Wes asked. Nat had crossed the street to enter the same building they were in; she lived in the apartment unit located directly below them.

Shakes grunted and spoke in a low tone so only Wes could hear him. “Don’t take the blood money. Snitching on border jumpers is for cowards. We’re no thieves. C’mon, boss, let’s do the job. Think of what we could get with twenty thousand watts. A warm bath, and not just at the hostel either, but at a real hotel. The Bellagio even. The Sweet Suite.”

“It’s too risky,” Wes argued. “We can’t all die because she wants out.” It wasn’t just about the credits. He couldn’t put their lives on the line. He knew what awaited them in the black waters, and he had no desire to see if Bradley had found someone else to do that job. If he took her out there, they would be targets, vulnerable to scavengers and opportunists, if they even made it that far, if the food didn’t run out . . . “She seems like a nice kid, but . . .” He understood Shakes’s desire to help out, he really did, but the journey was too uncertain, no matter how badly they needed the watts. “Farouk, on my count—”

“Wait! Boss, hold on, hold on, hear me out!” Shakes protested.

Farouk looked up at Wes questioningly. Wes waved off the assault for now. “What is it?”

“I heard she might have the map,” Shakes whispered urgently.

Wes stared hard at Shakes. “And you’re just telling me this now?”

His friend looked chagrined. “I know it sounds crazy, so I didn’t want to mention it earlier, but . . .” He looked around to make sure the rest of the team couldn’t hear him.

“Did she show it to you?” Wes asked. “Was it like some kind of stone or something? An opal or an emerald?”

“No. She didn’t even mention it. I was talking to Manny the other day, and he asked me if I knew what the police were looking for in Old Joe’s place when they took him. Seemed real important since they tore the place apart. Whatever it was, Manny thinks maybe she has it. He saw Joe hand her something at the casino, right before he disappeared.”

That got his attention. Like Shakes, Wes had heard that Josephus Chang had won Anaximander’s Map in a legendary card game.

The map the whole world was looking for. But there is no map, because there’s no such thing as the Blue, Wes thought. It was wishful thinking on everyone’s part. Escape to another world. Anaximander’s Map was the biggest scam in New Vegas if Wes had ever heard of one.

But Joe had insisted the map was real. The old shark was one of the best poker players in Vegas, and supposedly he’d won it from a guy who had given him a bushel of apples as proof. The genetic code for the fruit had been lost for years; there were no more apples since the Big Freeze. Wes always wondered why Joe had stuck around, why he didn’t just up and leave immediately if he had it in his possession.

So they’d gotten to Old Joe but hadn’t been able to retrieve the treasure he’d held. Now, that was something to think about. If Nat had it, she was worth much more than mere bounty money.

“How much do you think we’d get for it?” Shakes asked.

“Who knows,” said Wes.

“What do they want it for anyway?”

“Isn’t it obvious? This world is dead. If there is another world out there—with blue skies, fresh water, food—they’re going to take it. They wouldn’t even let Texas leave the union, and there’s nothing there but frozen cow dung.”

“Let’s take the map,” Shakes said. “Could solve all our problems. Keep the crew happy, keep the military off our backs.”

“I thought we weren’t thieves,” Wes said with a crafty smile.

Shakes returned it with one of his own.

“So we play the long game,” said Wes, nodding. He saw the truth in it. If he took the map, handed it to Bradley, they would have work, credits; he’d be able to run an even bigger crew, maybe set themselves up as a private security force, have a real future in Vegas. Enough begging for scraps, enough humiliation, enough of the food lines forever.

But he wasn’t a thief. If he took the map, and if the Blue was real . . . it was Santonio all over again.

Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe he was damned either way already.

And even if this blackjack dealer did have the map, Wes didn’t think she would simply hand it over. She was too smart for that . . .

The team looked to their leader.

Wes clasped his hands. Map or not, she was still asking a lot of his men. When they joined his team, he’d promised to keep them alive as best as he could. “All right. Let’s put it to a vote. We get in and take her out, collect the bounty, or we do what she wants, do the work, and get paid.”

“Heard they’ve upped it to eight hundred a head for a jumper these days,” Daran sniffed.

Zedric nodded. That made two votes for bounty.

“How d’you plan on getting across the ocean anyway?” Daran asked.

“I’ll figure it out when we get there.” Wes shrugged. He’d never been one to plan ahead. “Shakes?”

“You know what I think.”

“Two for blood, one for life. ’Rouk?” Wes asked.

“Screw it. I wanna see the black water, why not.” Farouk shrugged.

Kaboom! This was it. Sparks flew from the Acropolis stage. The sound was deafening; even the air vibrated from the force of the explosion.

“Your orders, sir,” Farouk yelled.

“We do the deal,” he said finally. “We take her where she wants to go and we all come back rich and alive.” When it came down to it, Shakes was right, trading her in for bounty money was a coward’s move. The trip would be dangerous, sure, but in the end, they needed to work, and she had the credits. And if she had the map . . . well . . . he would keep his cards close to the vest for now.

He stared Daran in the eye. “You in? Get out now if you’re not.”

Daran held his gaze, then looked away, shrugging.

Wes nodded. Daran would follow orders like a soldier. Wes had taken the brothers on his team when no one else would—he’d heard of their reputations as burnouts but he thought he could rehabilitate them into better stuff—and so far, as surly as they were, they hadn’t failed him.

The team exhaled. Shakes smiled. Farouk began dismantling the bombs.

Wes took a comb from his back pocket and smoothed his hair. “Let’s go knock on her door.”

10

NAT DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO MAKE OF RYAN Wesson—whether she wanted to slap him or kiss him. Slap him, definitely. He looked so smug, standing at her doorway, with his hair slicked back and his collar turned up, a gun belt strapped low on his hips, his beat-up vest shrugged off his shoulders like some kind of snow cowboy, grinning as if he’d won the fireball lottery.

She’d just left the casino that evening, only a few hours after closing the deal with Shakes, and while she had impressed upon him her need to leave immediately, she was still surprised at how quickly Wes had appeared.

“Hey there, remember me?” His voice was low and pleasantly hoarse, sexy, she thought, just like all the rest of him. Nat shoved the thought out of her mind. He’s a runner and a con man, she reminded herself. A liar.

“How could I forget?” she asked.

“Ryan Wesson,” he said, offering a hand.

“Like the gun or the cooking oil?”

His grin broadened. “What about you, Nat? Like the insect or the princess?”

“Clever,” she said. “Neither.”

“Right. Just call me Wes, okay by you?”

“Fair enough.” Nat nodded, and shook his hand.

“I believe you have something of mine,” he said. “Four platinum chips, perhaps?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she retorted. Too bad for him. She’d taken her chance when Wes didn’t.

Sucker.

“You’re cute when you’re lying.” He smiled. “But since you have them and I don’t, I guess the only way to get them back is to take you where you want to go. So hop to it, peaches.”

“I’m ready,” she said, showing him her packed bag.

He tried to hide his surprise. “Once we drop you off at New Crete, I’m taking my boys back to Vegas. You’re on your own, no matter what we find there. We’re not sticking around after that. Got it?”

“Who says I want you to stick around,” she said tartly.

His dark eyes sparkled. “Careful, you might change your mind about that once you get to know me.”

“Doubt it,” she said, even as her cheeks flushed a little.

“Gotta say, you don’t look like someone who believes in that hoodoo stuff about some door to nirvana in the ocean,” he told her.

“Excuse me?”

“Come on, New Crete? You’re looking for the Blue, just like all the true believers.”

“I’ll keep my reasons to myself, won’t I? I’m paying for passage, not therapy.”

“All right, all right,” he said. “No questions asked, that’s our motto. Can’t help but be a little curious is all. You got the deposit?”

Half the fee. Right. She handed him two of the platinum chips.

He smiled. “Let’s go. Breaking curfew’s not going to be easy.”

She followed him out to an LTV parked in the alley behind her building. The truck was painted with a swirl of white arctic camouflage, and even its wheels were cut from a thick white rubber that rendered it almost invisible. It was a modified Hummer, with three rows of seats and a cargo hold in the back.

He opened the door and hustled her inside.

In the row behind her were a few guys dressed in thermals and gray-and-white snow camos outfitted with an impressive array of weapons. She wasn’t surprised to find the guy who’d drawn a gun on her the other day was part of the team.

“You’ve met Daran,” Wes said. “That’s his brother, Zedric, and that’s Farouk. Guys, this is Nat, our new client.”

“Well, hello again,” Daran said, as he shook her hand just a little too long. “Sorry about the thing at the Loss. All in a day’s work, right?”

She regarded him coolly. “Where’s Shakes?” she asked, looking for the boy with the friendly smile.

“Hey, Nat,” Shakes said, turning around from the driver’s seat.

She smiled, seemingly relieved Shakes was here, and Wes felt a hint of jealousy at that.

She was even prettier than he remembered, the kind of girl who could get anyone to do anything for her, he thought. A mouth on her, too, and she sure hadn’t blinked when he accused her of stealing those chips. Still, he’d been sure she would fold; her room was warm and cozy. No palace, but a place to call home. Why not use those credits for something else? He wanted to tell her not to waste it on him and an impossible dream of freedom. There was nothing out in the ocean but trash and trouble.

She seemed like a cool chick. Not that he was looking for anything in that direction right now, even with that bit of harmless flirting earlier. Just wanted to see if he could charm her was all, to get on her good side if he was going to figure out if she had the map or not. He had no need for any kind of attachment, especially after the thing with Jules ended so badly.

He helped her into the backseat and Shakes gave her a thumbs-up from the wheel, then the truck sped off into the darkness, spitting sparks into the air as they brushed icy concrete on both sides.

“How does he know where he’s going?” Nat yelled, struggling to fasten her seat belt as the LTV careened through the empty streets.

Wes tapped the infrared goggles on Shakes’s helmet. “Here, have a look,” he said, throwing his own pair her way so she could see.

She put them on. The truck was barreling through a back road that ran parallel to the Strip, where the redevelopment efforts had carved a trench in the ice.

“What about the Willies?” she asked. It was after curfew, when the only vehicles allowed in the streets were the Willie Winkie patrols or those with the right after-hours licenses, and from her tone, it was clear she didn’t think Wes had one of those.

“Let me worry about them,” Wes said curtly. “Most patrols are around the eastern perimeter, and we’re headed the other way.”

“Boss!” Shakes yelled, as the red flare of a rocket flew overhead.

Wes cursed. He’d spoken too soon. One of the heavily armored tanks that usually lumbered around the ice desert, transporting grunts to the eastern base, just happened to be in the area. “YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF ORDER 10123: EVERY CITIZEN MUST BE INDOORS. STOP YOUR VEHICLE AND PREPARE TO SURRENDER YOUR SECOND-LEVEL INDENTIFICATION PAPERS.”

“I don’t have any,” she said worriedly.

“You and everyone else in here,” he said. “Keep going!” he urged Shakes.

A bullet shattered the rear window, the truck struck a wall of ice, and everyone was thrown forward.

“Gimme those!” Wes commanded, and Nat threw his goggles back to him as he barked orders at his team. “Farouk! See if you can track their signal and jam it. Slaine boys—take out their snipers! I’ll take care of the behemoth.” He reached for his gun even as he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Guns were antiquated weapons for a dying empire. Wes carried one because he had to, but he’d never killed anyone with it; he’d threatened many, of course, he’d waved it around, and shot drones and trucks and who knew what else, but his hands were clean, and so were his boys’. There was enough killing in the world. He turned to Nat. “Cover me—you know how to use one of these things?” he asked, motioning for her to pick up a rifle.

She shook her head, and he stared at her for a moment. Every child in the RSA was trained to shoot; “every citizen an armed citizen” was the country’s unofficial motto . . . but there was no time to question. He called to Farouk and the boy shouldered the rifle, peered through the scope and set off a few rounds through the window. “Okay, go!” he yelled, backing down as Wes popped through the roof, rifle in hand.

Wes scanned the area, the goggles having turned the world green and black. He could see the tank coming after them a few blocks away. They were past the Strip now, close to the edge of the city, not far from the border. If he could stall it, they would be home free. There had only been one rocket.

He fired and missed the first two shots. Steady, he ordered himself. Steady . . .

Two more bullets sailed through the cabin. One nicked Farouk’s arm. “Snap out of it, boss!” the kid shrieked from the back. “Next one will be through our heads!”

“It’s the sniper—take him out already!” Wes yelled back.

“He can’t hide from me,” Daran promised, peering through his scope for the elusive shooter.

“Over there!” Zedric yelled, pointing to the top of the nearest building. “I see him!” They let off a few rounds, but the bullets continued to whiz by their heads.

A shell exploded just aft of the LTV, rattling the vehicle and sending them spinning.

“This is some escape,” Nat said, rolling her eyes. “You’re going to get me to the water? You can’t even get me out of the Strip.”

“Hey now, a little confidence would be nice,” Wes snapped. “Trying to keep us alive over here.”

“Get that tank down!” Daran yelled, while Shakes fought to keep the truck upright.

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Wes huffed. “Patience, everyone, patience.” He wasn’t planning on dying in a firefight.

Wes popped back up through the hatch and saw that he had his first clear shot. He targeted the engine, so he could disable the vehicle without hurting any of the soldiers. He’d been in their shoes not so long ago.

But just as he was about to fire, the whole world went dark. He was blind. His finger jerked as he pulled the trigger. He missed again. He let out a string of expletives. Frostblight. He’d been ignoring it for some time now, the blurred vision, headaches, but lately it was getting harder to deny.

A bullet whizzed past his ear. A second shot blew off their truck’s left-hand mirror.

“Hurry, man,” Shakes said from the driver’s seat, his voice calm but with an edge. His hands were gripping the wheel so hard it was vibrating.

“Let me,” Farouk said, reloading his weapon.

“I got it, I got it, everyone relax,” Wes said, with a slightly injured air. He lifted his gun again. The tank’s sleek white hull glistened like a child’s toy in the snowy air. He focused. The behemoth was an easy target; they were made that way so that their four-foot-tall wheels could grind up the snow. But there were half a dozen holes in the armor already. Typical. The white elephants looked intimidating, but they were vulnerable. Nobody knew how to fix anything anymore. The country was living off the past—all the technology dated back to the wars before the Flood. It was as if the toxic waters had washed away not only New York and California but all the knowledge of the world as well.

His hand steady and his vision clear, Wes pulled the trigger, and this time the bullet hit the target, piercing the armor and blasting the engine with a single round.

One more and the tank was dust, but the temporary blindness had dulled his reflexes, and before he could move, a fiery round hit him square in the chest. Where did that come from—?

“Sorry!” Daran yelled.

“Got him!” Zedric whooped, as his bullet shot the rifle out of the sniper’s hand.

Wes’s body shield held, but the pain was unbearable. The Kevlar jacket caught on fire, and he ripped it off, tossing it into the snow. A hole the size of a baseball was burnt through the fabric of his down vest. Black smoke drifted from the burn, bringing tears to his eyes.

“You’ll be all right,” Nat said, helping him down into his seat. “Surface wound.”

He grunted.

Up front, Shakes swerved to avoid a second round of rocket fire. The convoy had arrived, more tanks, and soldiers on snowFAVs. But the fence was only a few blocks away and once they crossed, they were free. The army wouldn’t risk a nighttime mission into the Trash Pile; at most they would send a seeker party in the morning, but by then Wes hoped to be well into the wastelands and impossible to track.

“Gimme a hand,” Wes said, slinging an arm around Nat’s shoulder. His right arm was numb and he had to switch hands to shoot.

“But you don’t have your armor,” she warned.

“Doesn’t matter, I need to get this done,” he insisted.

Nat nodded, helped him back up, and steadied him.

They were so close that he could smell her hair, even as his head hurt and he knew he would pass out soon. He lifted the gun and peered through the sight, then jumped back, startled.

The tank’s big gun was trained right at his head. He didn’t have time to think, didn’t have time to move; he fired, the gun an extension of his mind. The second shot destroyed enough of the engine to stop the tank. The big white heap of metal spun violently, its gunfire spraying a nearby building, rattling windows. There was a sharp cry from inside the beast, then silence.

Three more white elephants slammed into the faltering tank and the whole convoy came to a stop, just as Daran and Zedric took care of the snow bikes, sending them crashing into the ice walls.

The top of the tank opened suddenly, and its captain appeared, a boy his age, who’d wanted to get a look to see who had grounded their pursuit. He gave Wes the finger.

Wes saluted him with a smile as the LTV sped out of the city toward the fence, an invisible electric barrier that Farouk had just disabled with his handheld.

“Hit it, Shakes,” Wes said, rapping on the roof of the truck. “Time to root through the trash.”