HAWK

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: LIMBO (3/6)

They arrived in Sadoka little over an hour later. It wasn't a great city - a step up from Yun-Ko, sure, but that wasn't anything to boast about.

The female cap flying the cruiser said nothing for the entire journey until they reached the city's border.

'Where exactly am I taking you?' she asked.

'West Ashwood,' Kas replied.

'The Woods, huh? Nice place.'

Kas ignored the jibe and stared out of her window, watching the broken city below scroll by in endless street grids. Part of her thought she'd never see it again and she was struggling to shake off the surreal feeling that none of it was real. She'd travelled across the solar system, battled X1's and bio-mechs and uncovered secret after terrible secret. She'd used up all her lives but one, only now it was as if none of it had even happened. Down below, people were still living out their lives - working, sleeping, fighting, loving, hating, running. Nothing had changed one bit.

Has anything I've done mattered at all...?

She looked up at the swirls of blue between the clouds and thought of Astrid, wondering what had happened to her, feeling as though the sky might come crumbling down at any moment and partly wishing it would. Still, there was one thing that proved it was all real.

She turned and looked at the child mechanic sitting beside her and saw her staring out of her window with her nose pressed up against the glass. She was looking at a tall pointed building in the distance that jutted out of the city like a shard of black metal.

'That's the Spire,' Kas explained. 'It was supposed to be luxury apartment complex but it ended up costing more to build than the investors expected. They were forced to put the rent up to the point where no-one in the city could afford to live there. Before they could work out what to do with it, squatters moved in and took it over. Now it's a criminal stronghold.'

Worm watched the Spire until it shrunk into the distance. Kas looked back out of her window and realised they'd arrived.

'Bring us down here,' she instructed the cap.

'Yes, ma'am,' the officer muttered and the cruiser immediately began to descend.

Kas directed her to a children's playground which was deserted save for a murder of punk-crows. The blackbirds scattered to the branches of a dead folktree and watched on as the cruiser descended on their turf. The ship had barely touched the ground before the doors split open.

Worm slipped on her artifibre gloves and wiggled her fingers. The X1 suit seated opposite her twitched, and for a moment, it looked as though it was about to stand up, but it couldn't quite manage it and Worm had to physically help it to its feet. It was in a sorry state: its arms were hanging limp by its sides while its upper body had slouched to the left. Kas caught the cap watching them over her shoulder but the officer quickly looked away.

'Thanks for the ride,' Kas said.

The cap shrugged.

'Thanks for the ride,' Worm echoed via the suit. This time the cap jumped in her seat and cleared her throat.

'No problem,' she replied.

With another wiggle of Worm's fingers, the robot shuffled slowly down the ramp like a wind-up toy running low on power. Kas stuffed her hands into her pockets and followed them out.

They'd barely managed to walk ten feet before the cruiser tore itself away from the ground and drifted up into the bleak grey sky, its doors closing on the way. Kas watched it blend into the thin stream of traffic and fade into the distance. One of the punk-crows cawed as if about to launch an attack on the two women, but then the birds took off into the sky in the same direction as the cruiser.

Kas led Worm to a small stump of a building that looked like a concrete shed. Two words were sprayed above the doorway in bright pink letters:

THE TOMB

'This is where you live?' Worm asked.

'It's nicer inside,' Kas replied as she punched a code into the security panel beside the door. It slid open, revealing two elevators, one of which was already open. They went inside where Worm was curious to see thirty buttons, presumably for thirty floors. Kas pressed number eight and the elevator closed and started its journey downwards.

The Tomb was one of more than fifty underground living compounds in Sadoka alone. While the city's housing and population crisis had ended decades before, the cost of living above ground was still considerably higher than property below since there were no windows or any other source of natural light. Kas didn't care, though; the way she saw it, as well as being cheaper, underground living came with better privacy and security, which to Kas was far more important.

The elevator opened up onto the eighth floor where the two women and the robot stepped out. The lobby was small and square with doors in each of its four corners. Kas approached the one numbered 8-B and pressed her thumb to the ID-pad. It flashed green, at which point Kas said her name and the door unlocked with a hiss.

'Come on in,' she said.

The lights flickered on, illuminating the studio apartment in a dull orange glow. The room was square, thirty-feet along each of its walls, the lengths of which were decorated with outdated lambentile panels. Worm parked her robot next to the sofa and looked around the sparsely furnished studio.

'Still smells the same,' Kas said as she shut the door.

'I like it,' Worm replied via the suit.

'What do you want to eat? I'll order us something.'

'What are you having?'

'I'm gonna have the biggest, juiciest burger on the whole goddamn planet.'

'I'll have the same.' Worm stood in front of her broken robot and looked up at it like she was waiting for it to do something.

'What's up?' Kas asked.

'I'm going to need to order some stuff.'

'What kind of stuff?'

'Stuff to fix this.' Worm kicked the robot's leg.

'Our adventure's over, kid. What do you need the suit for?'

'Not the suit. The X1.'

Kas looked at the glossy black computer in the robot's neck where Hik's green digits once scrolled and remembered how fond of him she used to be.

'You think you can bring him back?' Kas asked her.

Worm shrugged. 'I want to try,' she replied. 'I also need to borrow some credits.'

'Oh, do you now? How many credits do you need to borrow, exactly?'

Worm screwed up her face as she did the math. 'Eight. Maybe nine.'

'Nine hundred, huh? I guess I cou--'

'Not hundred. Thousand.'

Kas's eyes bulged. 'You want to borrow nine-thousand credits?'

'I'll pay it back.'

'How?'

'I'll find a way. Please, Kas. I need this.'

Kas almost laughed. Not so long ago, she would have choked at the thought of lending a child almost ten-thousand credits, but considering they'd both almost died several times and knowing she still hadn't touched her huge payout from the Artisseum, she let out a sigh instead.

'So what do we need to buy?' she asked. Worm smiled from ear to ear.

'I'll make a list.'