Drinking Destiny Read online

“Sure.”

  “And you think it will be straightforward?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s stealing.”

  “I know.”

  “But what about the people the money belongs to?”

  “What about them? They are the ones who have created the mess we’re in now.”

  “Gregori Industries?”

  “Yeah, they’ve been taking over a ton of banks here in the U.S. They control a lot of the money that’s in circulation.”

  “Okay. I can see why you would want to rob them. What about the people who work on the truck?”

  “As I said, they’ll probably just run for it. It’s the security people that Gregori employs that might put up a fight.”

  “Hang on, you said you used to provide security. Aren’t they people like you?” I said, hoping I might be able to persuade Katie that this was a bad idea.

  “I was freelance. They changed things around when the VAMP virus reemerged.”

  “So, now they are all Gregori Industries goons?”

  “You really are getting into the speech patterns,” she said, turning to give me another one of those smiles that sent pulses of electricity through me and down into my shoes whenever I saw it. “They’re normally the guys who weren’t good enough to get into SCAR, so they’ll be tough, but nothing worse than we’ve handled before.”

  I thought about it as we walked through the bustling marketplace. On Dracos, stealing was heavily punished. It was frowned upon within society because it meant you were taking from someone who was often worse off than you were, causing them hardship, so it was something that rarely happened.

  Among the ruling families, it was common to try and gain an advantage by stealing technological secrets, and it was accepted as a fact of life, something I hadn’t really considered before as being hypocritical even though it so obviously was.

  “Well, if you think it’ll work, then I’m in,” I said.

  “Seriously?” Katie looked and sounded surprised.

  “Yes. I mean, somebody has to look after you.”

  I winced at the well-deserved slap on the shoulder my comment provoked and laughed as I draped my arm around Katie.

  A few weeks prior, days even, I would never have dreamed of doing such a thing. Earth wasn’t my home, and Katie knew that, but as time went by, I felt more and more relaxed away from the stuffy atmosphere of the court in Dracos. Away from my mother and her meddling ways. I was even feeling at home in Nindock’s town, and although I’d gone on a bit about numbers that morning, I was starting to understand why nobody wanted to go back. If the feeling of freedom I was enjoying was anything like the feelings the dragons who lived at Nindock’s were experiencing, then trying to get them to go back was a futile cause indeed.

  Once we were through the marketplace, we walked in amongst the ramshackle huts and houses the residents had built for themselves until we reached a building that had someone standing guard outside. Big Oscar. I hadn’t seen him for a while, and he didn’t exactly look pleased to see either of us. He sat on a hard, wooden chair on the porch of the house.

  “Hey, Oscar. You feeling better now?” Katie asked.

  Oscar’s eyes darted around, up and down the street that ran in front of the house. “Is Kam coming?”

  Oscar was huge. A good six inches taller than me, and the flattened bridge of his nose showed he’d been in his fair share of fistfights and other situations, but the guy looked terrified. I didn’t blame him. The last time he and Kam had come together had proved a painful experience for Oscar, and clearly one he didn’t relish repeating anytime soon.

  “Not that I know of,” I said.

  Oscar visibly relaxed, sitting back in the chair.

  “We have a delivery,” Katie said.

  “Yeah, well, good luck with that. She’s in a bad mood again.” He massaged the side of his arm like he was trying to rub away a bad memory.

  “Thanks, Oscar. We’ll take our chances.” Katie grabbed the handle on the door, twisted it, and then pushed it open.

  I nodded at Oscar and followed Katie inside.

  Inside the place looked like a hurricane had just blown through. The first room was, I supposed, what might be called a sitting room. There was a chair. The rest of the space was taken up with paper. Some papers were in stacks and the rest of the odd pieces were strewn around close to the chair but not looking like they were in any particular kind of order. I picked one piece up from the top of a stack and read what it said. I didn’t understand a single word other than the title at the top and the date: Experiment 4399 NT and the date from a few days before. The rest of the page was covered in squiggles and formulas. Then at the bottom, there was a large red X in ink. I guessed it was an unsuccessful experiment.

  “You’d best put that back,” Katie said. “You might upset her filing system.”

  I surveyed the mess around the room. “You mean this is a system?”

  I scratched my head at how anyone could find anything among all the pieces of paper. If the door opened and a breeze blew in, it would send pieces of paper flying everywhere. In the scheme of things, how could it matter if I misfiled one piece? When I heard a loud yell and a crash from through the doorway, I put the paper back carefully. This woman had a reputation, and I didn’t want to push it. I hadn’t seen Carol since Kam rescued her from Chemosys, and from what I had heard, she wasn’t pleased about being here.

  I followed Katie on a path that wound between stacks, being careful to move slowly so I didn’t cause a draft. Katie knocked on the door frame and called out.

  “Hi, Carol. It’s Katie. I have another sample for you. Is it okay to step on through?”

  “Are you alone?” The voice seemed slightly distant, sad almost. Maybe she wasn’t as crazy as everyone made out.

  “I have Jevyn with me.”

  “Is that it? No Nindock or that other dimwit?”

  I smiled at her calling Kam a dimwit and wondered what would happen if she said it to his face.

  “No. Just us,” Katie called.

  “Okay, come on through. Just don’t touch anything.”

  Katie looked over her shoulder at me and then flicked her head for me to follow. I decided I was going to do the sensible thing and keep my mouth shut while I was there, at least until I was spoken to . . . or yelled at.

  The rear of the house was divided into a large kitchen and dining area. Then there were another couple doors farther down the corridor that I guessed led to a bedroom and bathroom. Katie headed toward the kitchen, which was where the noises were coming from.

  We walked through the doorway into something akin to a teenager’s bedroom on steroids.

  There was stuff everywhere. The dining table was strewn with racks of test tubes, each one with writing on it with an experiment number like the one I’d seen on the piece of paper. The work surfaces in the kitchen area were covered with what looked like scientific equipment that had a multitude of lights flashing on the front, with dials and all other sciencey stuff that I had no understanding of whatsoever. I wished right then that Famil was there. She would probably have been able to make sense of some of it.

  In one corner of the room was a small refrigerator. On top of every other available surface was more paper.

  Carol was holding the refrigerator door open, bending over, looking for something, her arm inside shuffling stuff around.

  “Hey, Carol.”

  “Hey.” Her muffled voice came back. “Where the hell did I put that?”

  “What are you looking for? A sample?”

  “No, it’s . . . ah, there it is.” She grabbed whatever she was looking for, stood, slammed the door closed, and then faced us both.

  “I was looking for this.” She held up a sandwich. “I made it yesterday.” She unwrapped the foil and proceeded to eat. “I . . . am . . . starving,” she said with her mouth full, spraying crumbs and other detritus everywhere as she spoke. I started to feel a little queasy. “Either of you want a b
ite?” She held the sandwich out in our direction.

  I held up my hands to say no.

  “What’s in it?” Katie asked. We’d only eaten an hour or so ago, but she had a voracious appetite.

  “Roast chicken, mayo, hot chili sauce, and, um, orange marmalade.” She looked up again through the glasses perched on the end of her nose. “You guys sure?” She tore off another huge chunk and stood, one hand on her hip, the other holding the remnants of the sandwich while she chewed and swallowed.

  She shoved her glasses back up to a normal resting position and then offered the sandwich one last time. “You guys sure?”

  I nodded.

  Katie was fiddling in her pocket, I thought as a means to ignore the horrible concoction Carol had in her hand.

  “You guys want coffee? I think I have clean cups in here somewhere.” She dipped her hand into the sink and pulled out a mug that had evidently not been washed in days. “Well, maybe not.” Carol took another bite. “So, you say you have another sample?”

  Wisely, Katie took a step back every time Carol said a word beginning with S. Katie took the sample out of her pocket and tossed it to Carol, evidently not wanting to get too close.

  “So, we hear you’ve been getting upset, Carol. Anything we can do to help?” Katie asked.

  “Can you find my daughter and bring her here to me?”

  If I was going to allow myself to talk, I wouldn’t have known what to say. Would I want a child of mine to come into an environment like this? Crap everywhere, and blood everywhere. I don’t think so. I checked Katie’s face, and I was convinced she was thinking the same thing.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Katie said. “I promise.”

  Carol looked at her for a few moments, and I swear there were tears in her eyes.

  She must be missing her daughter a great deal, I thought.

  Then she nodded. “Please try?”

  “I will. How’s the research going?”

  “It’s . . . well, it’s going okay. I’m having to recreate everything I was doing at Chemosys because the computer we took isn’t working. Hence all the paper notes. But I’m getting close, I think. In the next few days, I might have something for you.”

  “Fantastic,” Katie said. “Well, I think we should be going. Enjoy the rest of your sandwich.”

  “I will, and thanks, Katie. I appreciate it.”

  Katie turned around and shooed me out the door, back through the sitting room, and onto the porch again. I was pretty sure Oscar was asleep, nodding off in the sunshine, so we left him to it and started back toward our quarters. We were due on guard duty that afternoon. We also had a robbery to plan.

  “Sir. Ma’am,” a man’s voice behind us said.

  Neither of us stopped. Whoever it was couldn’t have been talking to us. Not addressing us as sir or ma’am.

  “Sir. Jevyn? Katie?”

  That time we stopped.

  “Yes,” Katie said, spinning around. This was a sketchy part of Nindock’s town, so it paid to be facing people.

  “I saw you coming out of Carol’s place. I’m Cole. Cole Pitt.” The young man held out his hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Cole.” Katie didn’t take the hand, and neither did I.

  “You too,” he said.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked cautiously.

  “Could you spare me a few minutes? Maybe I could buy you both coffee?” He pointed at one of the shacks that an enterprising dragon had turned into a coffee house. It was busy with customers, but there was a table out of the way outside that he guided Katie and Jevyn to. Then he vanished inside to place the order.

  “Who the hell is this guy?” I asked.

  “No idea, but I need caffeine and he’s buying, so let’s just go with the flow, huh?”

  “What if he’s trying to con us into something?”

  “Relax, he’s not much more than a kid. I’m sure we can handle it. Here he comes.”

  I watched as Cole headed to the table with a tray with three cups on it and placed it on the table. “I got cookies too. I hope that’s okay?”

  “Sure,” Katie said, reaching over for hers and taking a bite. “Mmm, good cookie.”

  I took mine and bit into the sweet, sugary treat. Not for me. Katie wolfed hers down and then looked longingly at mine as if she hadn’t eaten in days.

  “Go ahead,” I said and laughed as she reached over, took the cookie, and proceeded to munch her way through it.

  Cole passed around cups of coffee, which was much more my style, and then I got down to business.

  “So, what can we do for you, Mr. Pitt?” I asked.

  “Please, call me Cole.”

  I nodded to that.

  “It’s actually more of a case of what we can do for each other.”

  “Sounds like a salesman’s spiel,” I said.

  “I’m not selling. Actually . . .” He leaned in and then looked both ways over his shoulders. “I’m buying.”

  “We have nothing to sell,” Katie said.

  “Not yet, I get that,” Cole said. “But you’ll have something soon according to Carol.”

  Katie frowned. “You spoke to her?”

  He nodded.

  “How?” I asked. “Her place is guarded all day.”

  “I bring Oscar coffee. Other things he likes, too.”

  Ah. Bribes.

  “So, Cole, what’s your interest? There’s no money to be made out of this. The cure will be provided for free once it’s finalized,” Katie said.

  “That sounds good. My interests are twofold. I’m the CEO of a small company, and we are trying to break into the same kind of markets as Gregori Industries, but because of how big they are and how much they control, we just keep getting flattened when we try to compete. Gregori controls virtually every aspect of the business, even down to the suppliers, so we need something to either make Gregori admit their role in this virus disaster, which would be the ideal, or we need to find something, some way that we as a company can supply a cure to sufferers—a cure that isn’t that Gregori implant.”

  “So, you’re just a money-grubbing corporation like Gregori Industries?” Katie asked.

  “Hardly. We’re probably a hundredth the size, which is why things are so tough for us, but the most important thing is that we—I—want to actually do things right, give something back. We would never have released that virus, and we would never charge for a cure. Quite the opposite. I’m willing to pay to develop it and get it working as soon as possible.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Is that it?” Katie asked. “Because it’s the right thing to do?”

  “Pretty much,” Cole said and then took another bite of his cookie and chewed on it.

  “We’re not interested.” Katie’s tone was adamant, and she drained her cup and stood to leave.

  Cole held up a hand. “Katie, wait. Don’t you even want to know what we can offer your people?”

  I had stayed seated, and Katie looked over at me. Personally, I thought there was something off about Cole that I couldn’t quite put my finger on right then, but the least we could do was hear him out. I communicated that with a shrug.

  “Okay,” Katie said when she retook her seat. “Tell me what the offer is, and then I’ll say we’re not interested.”

  “Well, first off, I really am trying to do the right thing here. The first thing I want to do is source artificial limbs for the people here who are missing them. I’ve never seen so many amputees in one place. What happened to them, anyway?”

  “You know Nindock?” I said.

  “Sure. He seems like a decent person.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Well, that depends on who you ask, but decency isn’t enough to open a rift that works a hundred percent of the time. His don’t, and the end result is people with limbs missing.”

  “Okay, I understand that only too well.”

  “Really? How so?” I
asked.

  Cole shook his head. “Not important right now. So, the limbs would be useful?”

  “They would,” Katie said, “but most people seem to be getting along without them. It doesn’t seem like much of an offer.”

  “I’ve also offered Nindock all the supplies he needs to build proper houses. Would that help?” Cole said hopefully.

  I could see Katie nodding, but I had my own objection to that prospect.

  “One problem with that is that soon this place will be either empty or cut off from Dracos completely. The rifts between Earth and Draco will be closed forever by my mother.”

  “Right. Lalnu, yes?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You know my mother?”

  “Well, I don’t know her, but I do know of her. She sounds like a tough lady. Do you really think she’ll be able to close the rifts?”

  “I don’t think she would make a threat like that and not be able to follow it through. If she can’t already, she’ll have a team of people working on how to do it soon.”

  “Why would she want to do that?”

  “The virus,” I said. “She’s concerned about it crossing over to Dracos.”

  “But if we can find a cure over here, which we will, and get it out to the vamps and make sure the dragons get a dose too, surely, there would be no need to close the rifts?”

  I leaned back and crossed my arms. “It’s too big a risk to take. We have too many people to take care of over there. If the virus hit, it could wipe out millions.”

  “That’s all the more reason to try and find a cure then, no?” he asked.

  I stood. This guy was getting just a little too pushy for my liking. I’d told him my reasons for not wanting anything to do with his scheme. There had to be something in it for him. Nobody was quite that selfless in my experience.

  “I’m sorry, Cole,” I said. “As far as I know, what you’re suggesting would be a waste of time and effort. Come on, Katie, we’ll be late for duty.”

  I turned and walked off. I had probably only made it five paces before I stopped to see why Katie wasn’t following.

  Cole had his hand on her arm, holding her back. Although I couldn’t hear, I could see that he was talking quietly to her, but my immediate urge was to go to Katie and get rid of the guy. I took one step, but he let go of her arm. They exchanged a few more words, and then Katie left Cole standing at the table.