Icarus

Part 4

Back at the silo, most of the kids were asleep. Roger sat alone at his C-shaped desk, spinning from one screen to the next, fingers tapping like his life depended on it. His didn’t, but Lyr’s life probably did. The stark light of the computer screens cast eerie shadows across his tense face in the dark room. He hadn’t dared to turn on any lights for fear of waking the others.
“Come on, come on!” He muttered. “Please!”
Finally, he found what he wanted: a way into the Elites’ citizen database. If whoever Lyr had been before was ever in Port Nerona, he’d find her here. He might also find some good heist targets for the gang, but that was a secondary concern at this point. Roger had to know why the Elites wanted Lyr dead. Knowledge was power, and he needed as much of both as he could get right now. Lyr herself would probably say it didn’t matter why, but Lyr wasn’t here right now.
But Fates, he wished she was.
Lyr could be damn infuriating, and frequently was, between the impulsiveness, the paranoia, and the way she kept pushing everybody away, like the idea of having feelings that weren’t anger was impossible. However, she was also loyal in her own weird way. He knew he could count on her, especially if they got into a fight with another gang. That girl had some serious combat skills. Roger took another sip of his coffee, blinking to refocus his eyes. He’d been staring at these screens long enough that they were beginning to hurt.
Somebody tapped Roger’s knee, making him jump. It was Miri, the youngest kid in the gang at somewhere around six, and the best science-mage he’d met in his life. She was holding her ratty old stuffed otter under one arm and a mug of hot cocoa in the other hand.
“Are you still looking for Lyr?”
Roger sighed, hoisting Miri up onto his lap for a hug.
“Yeah. You should be in bed, Meerkat.”
She pouted at him. She really did look like a meerkat, with her large, tilted dark eyes and slightly upturned nose that crinkled up when she laughed. “You’re not my mom.”
“No, but I’m your leader who says you need sleep for the mission tomorrow night.”
Miri grinned. “I get to come?”
“Yep.”
“Yay! Where are we going?”
Roger made a conspiratorial face. “Guess.”
“The harbor to guard smuggling again?”
“Something more special.”
“Oh, oh, oh! We’re gonna use the tunnels for something, aren’t we?!”
Roger nodded.
The tunnels had been something he and Miri had discovered by accident a couple weeks ago while comparing old city maps to current ones. It was a labyrinth of abandoned catacombs under the city, intersecting in some places with the monorail tunnels but still completely secret. It had probably been hidden by science-mage freedom fighters before they all abandoned their cause and got enslaved by the Elites.
Since he had a spark of science-mage talent himself, mostly with computers, Roger knew that painful chapter of history all too well. He was lucky to have had parents who helped him disappear off the grid of lawful society to keep him safe and free, unlike Miri’s parents, who’d sold her themselves. The gang had rescued her just a few months before they found Lyr, and the two girls had formed a strong bond during their recovery. Miri was clearly missing Lyr now.
She laid her head on his shoulder. “Can I help you look for just a little bit, Roger? Me and Quark?”
Quark was the stuffed otter. Roger sighed, then nodded again. “Okay. You and Quark can help out. Run Lyr’s photos through this part of that database, but be careful. We can only do this for so long before everything resets and our cover gets blown.”
Miri pulled up a chair of her own and started working, small face grim above a hot-cocoa mustache. They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, fingers flying over the screens. Then something caught Roger’s eye. A photo, not in the citizen database, but in the immigration records, of a young girl with long bright blue hair. She was blurry with movement and didn’t look happy about having her picture taken, but she was holding tightly to the hand of an out-of-frame adult.
Roger scrolled to the next photo, heart pounding. It was of an older man, old enough that his beard and hair, which also appeared to be naturally blue, had thick streaks of gray in them. He was smiling nervously at the camera, one hand on the brim of his old-fashioned fedora. Roger quickly sent the photo to Miri. “Run this one through too. I think I found Lyr’s dad or something.”
He looked at the names under the photos.
“Reynold Thaniels and granddaughter Jorella Thaniels. Refugees from the Kelmari Civil War. There’s nothing else in the records on either of them, though. It’s almost like somebody tried to hide that they even existed.”
“That’s not good.” Miri said.
“Yeah, I know.” Roger muttered absently, staring at Lyr’s picture.
“No, that’s not good!” Miri snapped, pointing at her screen. “Somebody noticed us! We triggered an alarm and it all froze up!”
Roger yelped. “They’re probably tracking us already. We need to leave, now.”
In a matter of minutes, everyone was awake and packing, throwing on boots and jackets over their pajamas. The kids streamed out of the silo into the night, and just in time. The Elite’s enforcers had arrived.

Searchlights pierced the night sky and the air was filled with the noise of helicopter blades. Roger led everyone deeper into the maze of old industrial buildings until they reached a tumbledown shack by the edge of the bay. This was the entrance to the tunnels.
“Down here, guys, quick!”
Once everybody was settled and they’d rigged up some makeshift lights, a dark-skinned teenager with a dreadlocked fauxhawk stood up from the group.
“Roger, I know you’re the leader, but you better have a good reason for this.”
“I did, Finn. I finally managed to get into the Elites’ database and --”
“And what? You got cocky, you got distracted, and you almost got us all killed!”
Finn crossed their arms. “You were trying to find Lyr, weren’t you?”
“Yeah, because she’s a valuable asset to the gang!”
“More like because you’re worried about your crush.” Finn said scornfully. Then their face softened slightly. “Face it, dude, she’s not coming back. I know you care about her, me too, but she left of her own free will. You’ve got a gang to lead, and you gotta focus on that right now. Everybody’s freaked out, hell, I’m freaked out, and we need you.”
Roger nodded. “Thanks, Finn. I’m not giving up on Lyr, but she can probably handle herself until we get settled again.”
He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and started moving through the mass of kids, helping arrange belongings, fix up minor injuries, and distribute hugs and instructions. Pretty soon everyone was getting drowsy again as the adrenaline rush wore off.

Roger put himself on first watch, since after all, they had no real idea what lived down here. After he woke Finn for the second watch, he flopped down onto a pillowcase filled with extra clothes and fell asleep almost immediately. Roger’s last thought before his eyes closed was that Lyr was at least probably safer than him at the moment. He didn’t know just how wrong he was.