The Law and the Codas

Chapter Twenty

The Codas HQ is unremarkable, which is the point. I would never have ambled down the street outside and thought for a second this wasn't the third in a row of V-cafes. While the outside retains the shabby facade - cracked brick, grimy windows, and the pale pink neon sign of others of its kind - it's insides have been converted, much as they can be, to make a sustainable place to lay low.

A few Codases dare to approach the pair, as Marava's clucking - all in a fast-paced garbled Spanish - has managed to scare them all away. When Marava stands, to re-dampen a rag in the faucet, Jonathan flashes me a pleading look.

Jonathan's face falls, his brows knit together. Marava plops down beside him and lets the rag sit across his forehead. He smiles at her, and takes her hand in his, peppering it with tiny kisses. Keran swings back around on her swivel stool to face me, a strip of gauze stretched between her hands. I shake my head and she frowns.

"Della told me to bandage you up."

I laugh. "You'll hurt me on purpose."

Her hands squeeze the gauze. "I'll shove this gauze where the sun doesn't shine if you-" she advances on me, grabs my wrist, pulls me toward her. I almost slip off the chair.

"Let me see." She turns my hand over, inspecting the purple flesh of the knuckles. She prods one with her fingertip. I yelp and resist the urge to smack Lieutenant Strong Hands away.

Jonathan and I lock eyes, and he gives me that same helpless, 'you're own your own' look I'd given him seconds earlier. I understood. He had his own pain master driving him insane.

Keran frowns as she begins to wrap my hand. "I think it's sprained," she moves the gauze expertly around my knuckles and palm. Not too tight to hurt, or too loose to fall off. "Bruised to hell, but the bones seem intact."

She glowers while reaching for a pair of scissors on her lap. "If you take care of it, should heal in about three to six weeks." She snips the excess gauze and grabs a roll of medical tape.

"Three to six weeks?"

"If I had the supplies for a splint, it might take less time to heal. But knowing you," I heft my foot up and place it on the designated spot, "You'll end up making it worse. Three to six weeks is an optimistic estimate."

"I used to bandage up Della's injuries," Keran says, quietly.

I snort. "You mean the great and mighty Codas Commander can be injured?" Keran smacks my ankle and it smarts.

"Sorry," I say.

She places my foot on the ground, with a little more gusto and a lot less concern than she'd been doing earlier. "Do you still look after Della's wounds?"

Keran's shoulders tense and the muscles in her jaw go stiff. I brace for another impact of her hand on my ankle, but she doesn't make to move. She just sits there, staring at her lap. Absent of her gun, and that soldier bravado, I want to ask her how old she is, but I refrain.

"She takes care of herself now." Keran plucks the leftover gauze off the floor and balls it in her hands. "I don't even know when she's hurt these days." Her knuckles go white as she squeezes them.

"Keran-"

She jumps to her feet, slamming the gauze to the floor. Her eyes seem on the verge of tears. Her bottom lip trembles. "I didn't even know there was a spy. A spy!" She kicks over the bowl. Old bandages tumble across the floor. "How useless can I be?"

A Codas, one I've never seen before bursts through the plastic, double doors. They swing on their hinges as she enters, her hair of sea of contained flame shaved close to her scalp.

"Ellie," Keran says, turning away from me. The spry, red-haired girl gives Keran that odd chest salute.

"Lieutenant." Keran's cheeks flush as she returns the girl's gesture.

The girl's whole demeanor is one of the sharpened edges, her shoulders back, neck stretched, and tense. Her face doesn't show any signs of youth but rather showcases year's worth of hardship, etched in each wrinkle that cuts across her ruddy skin. "The Commander's ready. to the inner chamber."

Keran nods. Ellie gives her one last rigid salute, clicks the heels of her boots together, turns, and vacates the room as quickly as she had come. The door hinges don't even have time to stop squeaking before she disappears beyond them.

Keran rubs her hands together, then makes for the shelf above the sink. She grabs up her gun and tucks it back in its holster. "You heard her," she says.

Marava helps Jonathan to his feet, despite the protest flickering across his face. He swallows back the words he wants to say and allows Marava to dote over him, though I can't imagine it being a lasting arrangement. I use the chair's armrest to help secure me in an upright position. The splint's taken a great deal of weight off my injury and while my movements are as rigid as the hands of a rusted clock, I manage to hobble my way over to Keran.

"Why do we need to be there? Isn't this internal Codas business?"

Keran appears to mull my words over. She and I were sharing similar wavelengths, weren't we? She'd been wondering about our inclusion too. Keran's fingers close around my upper arm and she coaxes me through the double doors.

"You're part of the Collective now," she says, helping me navigate past couch cushions, discarded food rations, and crumpled clothes. "This involves you as much as it involves any of us."

Her jaw tenses as we reach the bottom of a staircase. I look up the mountain of steep steps. The muscles in my ankle cry out.

Keran takes a step, turns, and waits for me. "Take them one at a time, and you'll manage."

I nod and do as she instructs. "Thanks," I say. She grunts. "No really. Thank you."

Each stair creaks under me as I hobble from one to the next, Keran's hand supporting me under my armpit.

"You won't be thanking me once you see what Della has planned." Keran's face sours. A shiver of ice treks over my spine. At the top of the stairs, we walk a length of the carpeted hallway until we arrive at a nondescript, wooden door flanked by armed Codas men. Mid-twenties with withered faces, all tan and sunken in, as if their insides had been sucked out through a straw. They grunt at Keran instead of giving her the salute her rank should earn her. I'd thought insubordination of any kind, would land you on the receiving end of Keran's foot or gun, but she's too preoccupied with the door to make these guards her bitch.

Her hand settles on the knob. She inhales. "You're about to see how far we'll go to obtain justice." Her lips pull into a hard line.

"You're just going to kill someone. What's one more corpse added to the pile?"

Keran shakes her head, peels back the door. "You're clueless, Ten."