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  “Come on back here, where I can get a good look at you.”

  Omar walked the length of the bar. He tried not to look at the bottles of alcohol on display just out of his reach, but they were too beautiful.

  He reached the woman and stopped. She was wearing a red and black animal-print dress. She was pretty, though desperately thin with a gaunt face and hollow green eyes. Too green. Fake. She reminded him of Red, back in the Midlands. All bones. Nothing soft left to her. Though unlike Red, she had thin, straight black hair that ran over her shoulders and curved past her breasts to her waist. Her skin was tan and flaky and decorated with lacy black lines. SimArt. Her lips were thin too, and painted maroon. The shade was off from the red in her dress. It was orangey, where the red in her dress was bluish.

  She walked around him. Omar noticed she swayed when she walked. And when she stopped before him again, she reached out and touched his face with the tips of her fingers, which made him shiver. She was kind of creepy, for some reason.

  “Walls, you’re pretty,” she said. “What’s your name?”

  “Omar.”

  “Can I get you a drink, Omar?”

  “Can I get a vape of brown sugar?”

  She stared at him a moment, then her lips curved into a slow smile. “Brown sugar is not a drink, sugar.”

  He swallowed, thirstier now that the options had been narrowed. “I’ll have a drink. Anything is fine.”

  She swayed past him and behind the bar. She set two shot glasses on the counter and picked up a bottle of something clear. She filled only the bottom of the glasses, an inch of liquid, leaving most of the glass empty. He was an idiot. He should have asked for a beer.

  She pushed one glass toward him. It slid across the shiny counter, scraping, the sound matching the ache in his bones. Her fingers were long and thin and tipped with red, which made him think of Belbeline.

  He grimaced at the memory, grabbed the glass, and swallowed the contents. The liquid burned as it trickled down his throat. He set the glass on the counter and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

  “You’re a hungry one.”

  He didn’t know what she meant, so he said nothing. “You’re Rain then?”

  “Like water from the sky, sugar.”

  Um . . . okay. “Prav said I could get brown sugar if I tasked for you.”

  “If you task for me, you can get anything you want, Valentine.”

  She was teasing him. “So what’s the task? Is there an application?”

  “It’s hardly a task at all, really.” Rain scratched her fingernail along the neckline of her dress and looked deep into his eyes. “Women in the Lowlands are lonely, Omar. The men would rather go to the clubs and pay young striker women to play than look for companionship amongst women their own age. Don’t all women deserve the same pleasures in life? Hmm?”

  What did that have to do with anything? “I suppose. But aren’t there clubs for women to — ”

  “Yes, yes.” She waved her hand. “They have them, of course. But women like being treated special. And those clubs . . . It’s shallow there, Omar. Women want more. I provide them with more.”

  Oh. He didn’t like where she was going. “What exactly would I have to do?”

  “Again, you’re missing the point. You don’t have to do anything. You have a right to enjoy life as much as the rest of us.”

  He was tired of her games already. “Stop saying nothing. Just tell me the truth.”

  “It’s simple, really. I’ve created the ultimate dating ser vice.”

  Omar’s stomach tightened. “Would I get to pick who I date?”

  “No, sugar. I pick.” Rain pointed at her chest. “And only when I get confirmation from my client that things went well will I pay you.”

  Omar felt very small then. She would give him the stims he wanted — needed — but only if he traded paint with whomever she wanted. “Wouldn’t that make me a . . . uh . . . prostitute?” He ran his hand through his hair, embarrassed. He’d never in his life heard of a male prostitute. He couldn’t believe it was really a real thing. And that he was still standing there.

  “Now why would you go and put a label on such freedoms?” Rain asked.

  Label? “It is what it is. I mean, what’s free about it? Nothing.”

  “It is what you make it, Omar. Good attitudes are contagious, you know. You don’t have to be so negative.”

  He wasn’t being negative. This was twisted. There was no way he could do such a thing. Unless . . . “Could I vape first?”

  Rain laughed, and it almost sounded like music. Omar bet she could sing. “My clients don’t pay to play with juiced-up men. And you’ve already admitted to being a sweet tooth for brown sugar. That stuff makes you nod into a coma.”

  “I could do grass first.”

  “Not from me. My offer stands. Your choice. Take it or leave it.”

  Leave it, Omar, you fool. “Can I think about it?”

  “Sure. Think all you need to, sugar.” She reached under the counter and pulled out a PV, which she set on the surface and rolled from one hand to the other. He watched it. It was black and thick. A man’s PV. He swallowed. He could take it from her. He had to be stronger than she was. He glanced around the room for yellow cameras and instead saw a black one looking down on him.

  “You’re not thinking of being naughty, are you, Omar? My bodyguards wouldn’t like that.”

  Omar looked into her eyes, winced a little as a bone-aching shiver attacked. He slouched onto the nearest barstool and watched the PV roll back and forth, back and forth. He wished Mason were here to haul him out of this place. He knew he should leave, but the PV had hypnotized him.

  “I’ll tell you what, sugar. You spend an hour with me, I’ll not only give you a vial of brown sugar, I’ll let you keep this here PV as a present. Do you like presents?”

  “With you?”

  “I have to know what my boys are capable of, don’t I?”

  Omar knew he should leave or pray or do something sensible. But all he could do was watch the rolling PV, the way the black cylinder reflected on the shiny gold counter. He felt sick in so many ways. Sick to his stomach, sick in his bones, sick in his mind, sick in his very soul. Sick at the arousal rising in him despite himself. He was dying. If she’d give him a ten, maybe if he took it fast he could end everything, finally be at peace. Unless he went to hell, of course.

  He knew that Shaylinn would say that heaven and hell wasn’t about his actions but his relationship with God. But maybe she was wrong. Maybe there was no hell. Maybe everyone went to heaven. Or maybe there was no heaven, no God, just nothingness. Darkness. Emptiness. Or maybe another life. Or maybe Bliss for everyone.

  “Okay,” he said, hating himself more than ever. He wanted to cry at that thought, but he shook it off. He didn’t have to like himself. He just needed to survive long enough to get that PV filled with brown sugar.

  She smiled at him, like she’d won a great victory, then came out from behind the counter and reached for his hand. She held the PV in her other hand where he couldn’t reach it. Yet.

  He slid off the stool and took her hand lightly, and she pulled him through the beaded curtain.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Someone grabbed Mason’s ankles and pulled. His body slid off the mattress and onto the floor. He looked up into Scorpion’s angry, black eyes.

  Mason’s eyes flashed open, his pulse throbbing in his ears, his hand stinging from the effects of his SimAlarm. Time to get up. It had been a dream. Only a dream. Anxiety gripped him tighter than any man’s fist, and he lay staring at the bunks above and the ceiling, breathing slowly to calm himself down. People were moving in the room.

  “Time to get up, kid.”

  Mason’s head twitched as he found the source of the voice. Rock Fist was sitting up on his bed, looking down on Mason from his bottom bunk.

  Mason stretched until he could see the glowing blue digits of the clock on the center of
the wall where the doors led into the room. It was 5:27 a.m. “I don’t need to wake for another hour.”

  “We’ve got the car wash on Saturdays. It’s mandatory.”

  “Oh.” Mason sat up. “Where do I go?”

  “Just follow the crowd.”

  Mason would follow Rock Fist, not the crowd. Many of the guys were already leaving. Mason made a project of making his bed, stalling in hopes that Rock would get up and walk to the door. But Rock appeared to have fallen asleep sitting up, which Mason found strange for the man who’d told him to wake up.

  Then he saw the man’s lips moving. Could he be praying? The very idea chastened Mason at how little time he’d devoted to prayer since they’d come to this place. Sure, he prayed continually, but they weren’t prayers of devotion and praise or any sort of meditation on Scriptures he’d memorized. His were prayers of need, a string of selfish, “Help me with this” or “Help me with that.” But before he had the chance to bow his own head, Rock opened his eyes and stood up.

  He gathered the sheet off his bed. “Better go now, kid. Bring your sheet if you want a clean one.”

  Mason was already getting to his feet. He left his sheet, though. One night was clean enough for him.

  He followed Rock out into the hallway and to the stairwell. They went down past the first floor and into the basement, stopping just past the cafeteria, where a line of men stretched to the end of the basement hallway.

  Rock turned around in line and looked down on Mason. “Where you tasking, kid?”

  “I’m a farmhand on the feedlot,” Mason said.

  “You know what time you take lunch?”

  “I have to work it out each day with the others.”

  “Try to come eat lunch with me today,” Rock said. “Eat late, if you can. At two. No one should complain about that. There’s a Café Eat in Cibelo over by the entrance to sector one. Behind that is a place called the Get Out Now Diner. Meet me at the table in the back. I’ll buy.”

  Mason wanted to refuse, but he couldn’t think of a reason to, and he didn’t want to risk angering his protector. “Okay.” He only hoped that Rock Fist’s ideas of payback were something Mason could agree to.

  The line was moving fairly quickly, and soon Rock and Mason turned into a steamy room tiled in one-inch squares that were turquoise, white, or light blue. Inside the door, the line split into ten shorter ones that were queued up behind tile privacy walls. An enforcer stood at the door in front of a SimPad that was mounted on the wall.

  Rock touched his fist to the pad. It beeped.

  The enforcer read the screen and said, “Line three.”

  Rock Fist winked at Mason and walked to line three, standing behind four other men.

  Mason stepped forward and touched his fist to the SimPad. It beeped, and the enforcer said, “Huh. Line one, shell, and don’t forget to use soap.”

  Mason frowned as he walked past the enforcer and into line one. He counted the days since he’d last showered. It had to have been the morning before he and Omar had helped Kendall move up to the cabin. A full week ago, he guessed.

  There were only two men ahead of him, lined up behind a semitransparent shower curtain. He could see the peachy shape of a body inside the shower. A few minutes later the body moved out the other side. The man at the front of the line already had his socks and shoes off. They were sitting on the floor between his feet and a waddedup bed sheet. He stripped off his orange jumpsuit and underwear, dropped everything in a chute before the shower, then went inside.

  Car wash, indeed.

  Mason wasn’t thrilled with the idea of undressing in front of anyone — cameras included — but by the time his turn came, there was still no one in line behind him except the enforcer at the front door and the men being sorted into lines. He didn’t know why his line was so short, but he was glad of it, at least for his first car wash experience. The camera, he’d have to get used to.

  When he saw the man in the shower exit, Mason stripped off his clothes, dumped them down the chute, and went in, annoyed to see a camera overhead in the shower itself. Eyes were everywhere for the strikers. He quickly discovered the water was a single push button that sprayed high-powered streams of steamy water down on his head for ten seconds at a time. The soap was also a button that left a liquid stream on his palm. He lathered and rinsed quickly, then peeked around the second curtain into another curtained area with bins on both sides. Clean towels on the right, wet towels on the left. Then five bins of orange fabric on the right and five bins of white fabric on the left. Clean jumpsuits and underwear. Each bin was marked with a letter to indicate size. Then stacks of clean bed sheets.

  Mason stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel. He wrapped it around his waist, then grabbed a pair of underwear out of the medium bin. He hadn’t bothered to check the size of the clothes he’d been wearing. He held them up and thought they looked okay.

  Behind him, the shower started. Someone was coming through. He pulled on the underwear as fast as he could over his wet legs, then ran the towel over the rest of him and tossed it in the bin, not bothering to do a very good job. He was too panicked with the idea of someone stepping into his area of the curtain before he left it. He grabbed a medium jumpsuit and put it on. He’d barely zipped it up when the shower curtain behind him slid aside. Mason quickly stepped around the next curtain. The jumpsuit stuck to his arms and back where his skin was still wet.

  In the next section, a medic was sitting on a small desk, swinging his legs. He stared at Mason a moment, then gestured to a SimPad on the desk. “Tap, please.”

  “Oh, right.” Mason tapped his fist.

  The medic watched the results screen and hummed. “No plague?” He looked up, his gaze roaming over Mason’s body. “Wow, okay, then. No meds for you. Any health issues to report? Injuries?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How long you been here?”

  “Just one night.”

  “You okay in your bunk? No one assaulted you?”

  Mason swallowed. “Someone tried to, but, uh, someone else helped me.”

  The medic hummed again. “Be careful making deals. Protectors usually want something in exchange for protecting you. Be sure to tell the enforcers if someone is harassing you. Most try to help if they can. This isn’t a pleasant place to live, I’m sorry to say.”

  “You live here?”

  “No. I live in a shoebox of an apartment two blocks away. But that’s a hundred times better than what you’ve got.”

  That figured. Lawten, anyway. “Do you need more medics? I tasked as a medic in the Highlands before I came here.”

  The medic shook his head. “That’s not for me to decide. They know your skills. They put you where they want to put you. Strikers don’t get the luxury of retask testing. Work hard, and maybe they’ll move you someday. I’m sorry, but you need to keep the line moving. Shoes and socks through that curtain.”

  “Thanks,” Mason said.

  “Find pleasure if you can,” the medic said.

  “Yeah, sure.” Mason walked past the next curtain and found a bench on one wall and a metal door in the wall on the other side, like some kind of microwave oven. There was a SimPad beside the metal door, so he tapped his fist against it. Something in the wall ground together like gears shifting. There was a clump behind the door. Mason slid the door to the side. A pair of boots and a pair of socks sat inside.

  Convenient. Mason grabbed the socks and boots and sat down to put them on. He was tying his second boot when voices rose in the medic booth behind him.

  “Well, I need something! I can’t take this anymore. Why don’t you have mercy vapes here?”

  “It will be better for you to get clean,” the medic said.

  “I don’t want to get clean. I need some golden ice.”

  Mason thought of Omar then, and wondered if his brother’s sessions with the car wash medic sounded similar. He stepped past the next curtain and found he’d reached the end of the car wash
. A narrow corridor led back to the basement hallway.

  Time to go to the feedlot.

  It was his first full day on the field, and he didn’t mind it at all. The cows were in good humor despite their crowded living conditions. He walked the first row from pen one to eighteen and back, checking the cows for sores, pink eye, or injury, trying to get a feel for what was normal behavior here. He found nothing odd in any of the animals.

  He tried to forget about what the medic had told him about protectors wanting something in return, but he couldn’t stop imagining all kinds of horrors that Rock Fist might demand of him.

  The lunch hour arrived quicker than he expected. Coy and Wayd went first, and when they returned, Brondon and Prezan left.

  Coy found him in Pen 6. “You can go to lunch now. Wayd and I can watch the pens.”

  “I’d rather wait until two, if that’s okay.” Though he’d rather not see Rock at all.

  “Can you last that long? I hear the food in the striker’s caf isn’t the most filling.”

  “I can last,” Mason said. “I’m meeting someone.” Hopefully a friend and not a pervert.

  At a quarter ’til two, Mason left. He found the Café Eat easily enough, but it took him longer to locate the diner. It was a dark doorway between a Lift and a place called Garrick’s, which looked like some sort of dance club.

  Mason slipped inside the diner, very much on edge. It was dark inside. A counter ran along the left-hand wall. Booths on the right. Only five. Small place. He spotted Rock Fist sitting at the booth in the very back on the side facing the door. He waved Mason back.

  Mason limped toward the table. As he approached, he saw that Rock wasn’t alone. He was sitting with two women, though Mason could only see the backs of their heads. He was three steps away when their heads turned.

  Then he had to grip the booth not to fall over.

  “Mother?”

  And Shanna, who was Jordan’s, Jemma’s, and Shaylinn’s mother. Alive and well? He could only gape.

  “Praise God!” Mother jumped out of the booth and crushed Mason in a trembling embrace. Her familiar smell stunned him, for she couldn’t possibly have access to the same soaps and herbs to clean her hair as she’d had in Glenrock, yet the smell was still there. His mother.