Ch. 64

Chapter 64

Even in a city built on nothingness, word traveled like a live thing, slithering and hungry. By the third day in Siphon, Morgan’s crew was known: to the barkeepers who kept bottles under the table, to the hole-patched union men who mapped every rival crew’s softest member by memory, even to the sanctum-brethren who ran confession on the hour and, between penances, took bets on how long a stranger would last.

Xander found work first. He was hired on at [Stiltworks], a reclaimed wharf burned and rebuilt so many times it had fused into a monument to catastrophe. He returned each night with salt caked in his hair and the kind of fatigue that layered over old wounds like a new skin. Still, he always saved something—a wired smile, the best of a day’s catch, a story about someone dumber and more desperate than himself—to place at Carolina’s feet. She accepted each gift with the same mute suspicion and, after a week, started to look forward to them.

Lyra took a job immediately, unofficially, running scores for a woman called Ember, the closest Siphon had to a queenpin. The work was dirty—sometimes literally adhesive, sometimes even bloody—but Lyra seemed to thrive in the friction. Wyn drifted through the alleys and floating libraries and, for the first time, didn’t have to run unless they wanted to. Wyn’s only complaint was philosophical: “Nothing here is real,” they said, “except the hunger.”

Wyn had a knack for finding the places no one else saw: the rotting opera house repurposed as a granary, or the hollowed-out pump room where knife fighters settled impossible debts in a single, bright minute. It was in one of these places that Wyn found Morgan, three days after arriving, arguing with the foreman of a salvage barge.

“He’s also from the House,” Wyn said later, lounging beside Carolina on a roof that reeked of kerosene and scorched feathers. “Morgan and him go back to the first riots. They tried to kill each other at least twice.”

“Is that why she’s cussing him in three languages?”

Wyn grinned, teeth sharp as glass. “It means she respects him.”

Neither Wyn nor Carolina said anything for a while. The only sound was the chunk of the city shifting with the river, and the clustered screams drifting up from the souk.

Wyn said, “You ever think maybe we made it? Like—this is what comes after?”

Carolina traced a line on the tarpaper, watching the pitch-black curve under her fingernail. “Don’t know. Feels thin, like a miracle that won’t stick.”

A beat. “Miracles are always thin,” Wyn offered, and Carolina was surprised how much she wanted that to be true.

#

Morgan’s first call for a crew meeting came with urgency, but not the panicked flavor of a city at war. Instead, she set the time—midnight, on the rafters above the dry-ice rink—and expected everyone to show.

They did.

Morgan looked tired, more so than Carolina had ever seen her. Her tongue had lost some of its venom, her eyes hollowed by something more oppressive than hunger. Lyra showed up with a black eye, Wyn’s shirt was still spattered with book glue, and Xander looked like he’d just come off a week at sea. Carolina sat on a crate, legs swinging. It pleased her to be the most whole one, for once.

Morgan cupped her hands and started talking. “There’s a job. Not for payout. For the city. I know, I hate it too. But this place is on a knife edge, and if the unionists get pushed out, everyone who isn’t with Ember ends up dry or dead.”

Lyra flicked her cigarette into a paint can. “Let me guess: she wants us to smuggle in something, or out.”

Morgan snorted. “How droll. No, it’s dumber. She wants us to steal the vet’s ledger from the Far North sanctum.”

Wyn whistled. “The one with the immunity lists?”

“That’s the one.”

Carolina’s head buzzed. She’d heard stories about that ledger: the names scrawled in blood, the gigs and debts owed, the way that one thin sheaf of paper could make or break a dynasty. “Why us?” she said.

“Because we don’t belong to anyone,” Morgan said, “except maybe each other.” She paused, let her gaze slide over her crew. “We’re disposable, unpredictable, not worth bribing or killing until we finish.”

Lyra’s lips tightened, but there was no objection.

“We’ll need to ghost it tomorrow,” Morgan said. “It’s a shitshow of a plan, but if it works—”

“If?” Xander said.

Wyn shrugged. “If it doesn’t, at least it will be interesting.”

It was agreed. They would meet at the sluiceway at dawn, and until then, everyone was told to lie low. Carolina made to leave, but Morgan called her back.

“Stay a second?” Morgan’s voice were less command, more plea.

She did.

They were alone on the catwalk, the city stretched below like a bruise. Morgan leaned close enough that Carolina could smell the last dregs of the day’s coffee. “I meant what I said. I’m not sentimental. If you want out, now’s the time.”

Carolina stared at her, perplexed.

“I know the world’s kicked your teeth in,” Morgan said. “But we’re good. You keep them whole. I’m not sure why.”

Carolina swallowed, wishing she had a better answer than the one that came. “Me either.”

Morgan nodded like she understood everything. “Don’t die tomorrow,” she said, “or I’ll have to find another medic. And you’re the only one I can trust not to swap the painkillers with sugar pills.”

Carolina grinned, sudden and genuine. “Sugar’s too expensive,” she said.

#

In the morning, wisps of river fog clung to Siphon’s underbelly. They moved in pairs, the pretense of going separate ways barely maintained. Xander carried a length of copper pipe, Wyn a folded crowbar painted mint green. Lyra wore a scarf over her hair and bandages on both wrists.

They rendezvoused at the edge of the sanctum’s shell, a dome of rebar and glass so ancient it was a cathedral and a fortress at once. The outer guards were children, the inner ones not much older. Wyn did the talking, while Morgan and Lyra mapped the exits. Carolina kept her head down, old habits from the checkpoints, and didn’t hate it as much as she expected.

Inside was worse: too bright, too clean, rows of pews welded from auto parts and trash, confessionals partitioned by cracked LCDs. At the front, suspended like a relic, a chained ledgerman perched. He wore black gloves, and his mouth was covered by a strip of some shining polymer.

Wyn approached, arms up, harmless. “We’re here for confession,” they said, and the voice was so pure it carried.

The ledgerman nodded. Carolina watched as his fingers tapped a rhythmic code onto the linked tablets. Wyn followed, Morgan and Lyra trailing at a distance, Carolina and Xander inching behind.

The confessional was a cell. Wyn kept up the play, listing their sins: theft, fraud, breaking and entering, excessive profanity. The ledgerman entered it all, silent, a living lockbox. The plea Wyn slipped in was simple: they wanted absolution for a dying friend, and the only way to get it was to see the ledger.

For a long time, the ledgerman considered. His eyes, dark as burnt oil, flickered over them. He nodded once, then led Wyn to a back alcove.

Lyra sprang into action. She slipped past a pair of guards with the cold efficiency of a cutpurse born. Morgan distracted another, voice raised in a staged confrontation, complete with tears. Xander lingered, waiting for Carolina’s nod. When he got it, he shoved the copper pipe into an access panel and, with a judicious twist, killed the lights on the entire east side.

For three seconds, the sanctum drowned in confusion. Lyra was inside the records room, opening safe after safe with a battered keyring. Carolina waited outside, counting the seconds. At seven, Lyra emerged, clutching a scrap of paper and a USB drive with tape wound around it. The only sound was the heavy breathing of the startled congregation.

Morgan and Wyn reappeared, Morgan with a shiner rising on one cheek, Wyn with a shit-eating grin. Together they hustled out the emergency door and were gone in the crowd before the PA system could even blare a warning.

It wasn’t until the dock, fifteen minutes and a kilometer away, that they regrouped.

Lyra dropped the paper on the crate. It was covered in names, and one of them was Morgan’s.

Carolina scanned it. “What does it mean?” she said.

Morgan shrugged. “It means we’re both in more and less danger than we were yesterday.”

Wyn unspooled the tape and plugged the drive into a scavenged tablet. Lyra took the paper and read the names out loud, some known and some legendary.

It was a kill list, updated every month. If Ember had that list, she could eliminate half her enemies before breakfast. Or destroy the sanctum in one surgical blow. But if the union got it, they could maybe broker peace, or at least hold a truce over everyone’s heads for a little longer. It was a live grenade, and now it was theirs.

Morgan read it once, then again, lips pressed thin. “We deliver it tonight,” she said. “No sense holding hot iron.”

“No payout?” Xander asked, not quite masking the disappointment.

Wyn shrugged. “Nothing but survival, my favorite currency.”

They drifted back to the plankway, following Morgan’s lead, the air twitching with anticipation. At a contour in the dock, Lyra caught Carolina’s arm. Her gaze, usually a challenge, now burned reluctant gratitude. “Thanks, C.”

Carolina blinked. “For what? You nearly got us all dead.”

Lyra laughed quietly. “Because you keep it steady. And you never gloat.”

Carolina considered this, then flicked her a half-hearted salute. “I’m saving it up.”

Night swelled quickly, shedding the usual half-measures. The city felt like it was holding its breath, the old tides struggling against new, raw currents.

They met Ember in an old cold-room behind a cannery, redolent of rust and fish bones. She was smaller than Carolina expected, her face crowded with the delicate geometry of someone who had never, for a moment, been a child.

The ledger changed hands. Morgan watched as Ember scanned down the list and, for a moment, her smile cracked sideways, revealing yellow teeth and something like hope. “You did it,” she said. “That’s impossible.”

Morgan shrugged. “That’s the business.”

Wyn, standing in the gloom, asked the only question that mattered: “Does this do what you want?”

Ember’s eyes flicked up, as if seeing them for the first time. “No one gets everything they want,” she said. “But maybe Siphon breathes a little longer.”

The payout was a favor, not a number. They would be left alone, for a while, with no prices on their heads. In this city, it was worth a fortune.

Afterwards, on the steps above the river, Morgan and Carolina split a bottle of grain spirit. The others had vanished into the dusk, to celebrate or brood or simply exist.

Morgan handed her the bottle. “I was afraid you’d balk.”

Carolina shook her head. “No point. We’re all on the same list, in the end.”

Morgan looked up at the shifting stars, her face suddenly open. “I think I’d kill for this life,” she said, meaning the river, the grime, the stubborn flicker of survival in their little huddle of freaks.

Carolina said nothing. Instead, she leaned her head against Morgan’s, and for a few breaths, let herself believe that Wyn’s thin miracle might hold.

The city sang on.