Illumination

After about two, strenuous hours of walking, they arrived at the black market. Before entering, they stopped outside to make a game plan and so Jack could finally eat.

“I say we split into groups of two,” Liam said, crouching down and drawing an outline of the market in the crystalline snow. “Robin and I will get the parts needed and you two—” he pointed at Jack and Bailey “—will get other supplies and rations. Good?”

Jack glared at Bailey as she ate her liquified beans, but nodded assent. There’s worse things I could be doing. Like drugs, she thought, looking into Bailey’s cold eyes.

“Sounds good to me,” Bailey yawned, stretching her arms above her head and looking at Jack like a sleepy Apex eying its prey. “Come on, Squeak, let’s get going.”

“I’ve told you not to call me that about a million times,” Jack hissed as the two of them set off for the main entrance.

“Why not? You had no problem with it when you were eight. Remember your stutter? I called you ‘Squeak’ and ‘Mouse’ until it went away. Ah, good times,” Bailey said, walking at a brisk pace.

“You’re just as cruel now as you were when you were little,” Jack sighed.

“I’m glad I’ve made a lasting impression on you,” the other responded sarcastically, then changed the subject as the two of them entered the market. “Wow, this place sure is friendly.”

They were walking through dark alleys filled with cluttered shops set up in tent-like fashion. Their boots crunched on the ice and cloaked figures stared out at them through their helmet visors, silent and unmoving. “Well, it is a black market. They probably weren’t expecting two girls fresh outta college,” Jack commented. A few jeers and catcalls came their way, mostly from colonists drunk on booze. “Yeah, I can see why these people don’t spend much time at the colony. Their poor families…”

They approached the ragged tent that advertised ration sales and ducked under the flap. Inside, it was much warmer but certainly less cozy. Beer bottles lay shattered on the ground, without any effort made to even sweep the shrapnel to the side. Jack felt her boots crunch on the shards and instinctively winced at the sensation.

“—care about the cost, we have to keep our customers coming!” a stout, clean-shaven man was saying to another, driving his fist into the lopsided table to prove his point.

The other man, a tall, bearded figure who looked like he needed a bath and at least a year in rehab, wasn’t listening. His bloodshot eyes slid in the direction of Jack and Bailey as smooth as slimepearls and he grinned. “Welcome, welcome, ladies! Come right in, don’t be shy. What can we do for you today?”

“We need some rations. Enough to feed four people,” Jack explained. Bailey reached into her pack and pulled out her holopad, ready to pay. “How much?”

As the bearded man rummaged through the storage bins for the rations, a third man emerged from the back section of the tent and began arguing with the stout man. This newcomer looked to be younger than the rest, maybe in his early-twenties. He had flaming red hair and strikingly hazel eyes. He clutched at the buttons on his thickly padded jacket and began speaking in a strange language. The stout man grunted in annoyance but nodded reluctantly when the young man had finished speaking.

“Here you are,” the bearded man said once they’d paid, dumping the ration packs on the table and taking the money that the holopad had deposited. Once Bailey put the purchase in her bag, the two of them exited the tent back out into the street.

If possible, it had gotten even darker in the ten minutes they’d been in the tent. Jack was forced to turn up her Illuminator to full power in order to penetrate the blackness. It was snowing hard; everyone was vanishing into tents in order to stay out of the blizzard. “Come on. There’s one more thing I want to get before we rendezvous,” Bailey said, gesturing for Jack to follow her down another, narrower path.

“This one.” She pointed at a large, black tent patched up with grey spots that stood just a little further apart from the others. A small sign next to the entrance read “WEAPONS” in big, loopy handwriting.

“The others said nothing about this,” Jack protested as they approached. There was something about the tent that gave her a bad feeling; a prickling in her chest that made her instinctively hold her breath in an attempt to make it go away.

“You want to survive?” Bailey asked, one hand on the flap, ready to pull it open. “You’re gonna need guns. Big guns.” A wide smile spread across her face at the word.

“No, we don’t need guns,” Jack muttered, but ducked inside the tent nonetheless. I’m going to regret this later, she thought to herself.

The main counter was completely deserted. Jack could see a silhouette in the back of the store, not moving or making a sound. She gulped at the sight of hundreds of knives, each one filed to a point and facing outward, stacked on one shelf to the side.

However, Bailey wasn’t interested in any of those. She crossed the room to a large shelf stocked with blasters. “We need four. There’s only three. Guess Liam’ll have to miss out.”

“I’m not okay with this,” Jack admitted, eying the mysterious silhouette nervously.

“Relax, we’ll pay. Eventually,” Bailey said, handing her a sleek, silver blaster. “You’re not that righteous yourself. Plus, this is the real world, Squeak. Why would you care about one, poor businessman? Anyone who sells weapons illegally is bad.”

“Hey, not true!” Jack exclaimed indignantly, tucking the blaster under her arm. She opened her mouth to call Bailey out, but stopped when she saw the shadow stir. A muscled woman with scars all over her face emerged from the back and froze at the sight of the girls.

“Hello?” she said huskily, more of a question than a greeting.

“Uh, I just realized that I don’t have any more money,” Bailey whispered to Jack, who took a step back and mimed an empty wallet to her companion. “Okay, on three, we run.”

“Are you okay?” the woman asked, staring at the blasters with milky eyes.

“One, two, three!” Bailey grabbed Jack’s arm and yanked her out of the tent, feet pounding on the freshly packed ice.

“Hey, stop them!” the woman cried, bursting out into the street behind them. Unfortunately for her, there was no one outside to aid her except for drunk hobos, so it wasn’t long before Bailey and Jack were out of sight.

The two of them ran for quite a while until their legs gave out, then they stopped behind an overturned cart to rest and store the blasters, which could shrink to the size of pencils. “This is crazy,” Jack breathed to herself, cheeks flushing crimson.

“No time to reflect,” Bailey ordered, scarlet hair mussed. “Come on, let’s meet up with Liam and Robin. They probably have all the parts by now.”

They got up to leave and began the walk back to the rendezvous, which was where they’d first started. But as they walked past the food tent, the boy with the red hair emerged, grabbed Jack by the arm, and wrestled her close to him. She held back a squeak and glared at him, her face inches from his. He had the tattoo of a dragon snaking up his thick neck. “Whatever you do, they’re coming” he whispered in perfect English. “The new ones are rising to meet them. They love small spaces. So watch out, because there are things much worse than the common Apexes that you know now, trust me.”

Then he vanished back into the tent, leaving behind nothing but his words and a red mark on Jack’s arm.