Chapter 81: Common Interest

Nobody answered her.

Corwin opened his mouth and shut it again. Behind him, Dax was looking at the broken shells scattered across the ice, then at Abby’s hands, then at the shells again, as if he were trying to match one to the other.

Odell was the first to move. He walked past Corwin without looking at him, out toward the place where the nest had been, and crouched beside one of the dark lines running through the ice. He pulled off a glove and pressed his bare palm flat against the surface.

He stayed there a long time.

"Sasha," he said. "Come look at this."

Sasha went over, her blades still in her hands. She knelt beside him, and the two of them looked at the line together. Rain could see it from where he stood. It wasn’t a shadow in the light. It was a groove in the underside of the ice, deep and clean, cut in a long curve. When he followed it with his eyes, he could see it ran all the way around the spot where Corwin had wanted them to stand.

"They were nearly through," Odell said quietly. "Another minute. Maybe two."

Sasha said nothing. She stood up, walked along the line for ten or fifteen meters, and crouched again. Then she looked back across the ice at Abby.

"Carrier," she said. "Where did Reeve find you?"

"I answered an ad," Abby said.

"Bullshit."

"It was a very good ad."

Toller made a sound. It took Rain a second to understand it was a laugh.

Odell stood up slowly and pulled his glove back on. He came back across the ice until he was standing in front of Abby, and he looked at her for a while the way a person looks at a map of a place he’s about to walk into.

"If we’d gone in on the ring," he said, "that sheet drops, and we’re all in the water with twelve of those things under us." He shook his head. "I’ve been doing this eleven years. I didn’t see it. You saw it from the back of the line, holding two crates."

Abby shrugged. "I was bored. I was looking at things."

"Bored," Sasha repeated from out on the ice. "She was bored."

"Thank you," Odell said to Abby. It came out plainly, without any fuss, and then he turned around to face the others. "That’s the night. We collect what’s here and walk back to the gate. Nobody goes near the seams."

Corwin hadn’t moved the whole time. Now he did.

"Utility," he said.

Abby turned to look at him.

"You said utility." Corwin’s voice was quiet and very flat. "On the platform. I asked you what your skill was and you looked me in the face and said utility. ’It’s nothing, I’m good at lifting things.’"

"I am good at lifting things."

"Don’t." He stepped toward her. "Don’t do that. You lied to me."

"You asked what my skill was," Abby said. "You didn’t ask what it could do."

Dax laughed, short and ugly, without any humor in it. He’d come up to stand on Corwin’s left, and he was rolling his right shoulder slowly, the one he’d driven through half a meter of ice an hour ago.

"She made you look stupid," Dax said to Corwin. "In front of them."

"Shut up, Dax."

"I’m just saying."

Petrov stood a little behind both of them. He wasn’t looking at Abby’s face. He was looking at her hands, which hung loose at her sides, and his own hands had come halfway up, the way they did right before he threw a pane.

Rain stepped forward until he was standing beside Abby.

"She saved your neck," he said. "All three of you. Odell just told you."

Corwin’s eyes went to him. "You knew."

"I knew she could lift."

"You brought her in. You stood on that platform and said she needed credits."

"She does need credits," Rain said. "Everybody needs credits."

For a moment none of them said anything. The wind came across the lake and moved Abby’s hair.

Rain watched Corwin’s face. He watched him look at Abby, then at the field of broken shell around her, then back at her. He could see the moment Corwin did the math. Whatever she was, she’d just gone through nine Shellbacks the size of small cars in under a minute. Three C-ranks against that wasn’t a fight Corwin wanted to start in the middle of a frozen lake.

"What’s your name?" Corwin asked.

"Abby."

"Abby what?"

"Abby who just kept you dry," she said.

Corwin’s jaw moved. Then he smiled, a small, tight smile with nothing friendly in it, and stepped back.

"Sure," he said. "Fifty credits at the end, like I said." He looked at Rain. "We’ll talk about the rest later."

He turned and walked away across the ice, and after a second, Dax followed him. Petrov went last. He looked back over his shoulder twice before he caught up with them.

Abby let out a long breath through her nose.

"Well," she said. "He hates me."

"He hated you on the platform," Rain said. "Now he’s scared of you."

"Is that better?"

"Usually."

Peter was standing a few meters behind them. He hadn’t moved since the first explosion. He was holding a crate against his chest with both arms as though it were the only solid thing left in the world.

"Peter," Rain said. "You okay?"

"She," Peter said. "You. That was. She just..."

"Breathe."

Peter breathed. Then he looked at Abby and said, in a very small voice, "Does it hurt?"

Abby blinked at him. "What?"

"When you do the thing. The boom thing. Does it hurt your hands?"

She looked down at her right hand and opened and closed it. Her knuckles were red, and there was a thin smear of something grey across the back of her wrist.

"A little," she said. "Like punching a wall, if the wall punched back."

"Okay," Peter said. "Okay. Good. That’s good to know." He nodded several times. "I’m going to go pick up cores now."

He went.

Rain looked at Abby. Her hands were still shaking, faintly, now that the fight was over. She noticed him looking and pushed them into the pockets of her oversized jacket.

"Adrenaline," she said.

"Sure."

"It is." She was trying not to smile and failing. "Rain, I’ve never done that. Not like that. Not with nobody telling me to."

"You looked like you’d done it a thousand times."

"I’ve done it a thousand times in a training hall. With a supervisor writing down my numbers." She laughed, and the laugh came out shaky too. "Out here it’s different. Out here I was just doing it."

Rain bent down, picked up her knit cap off the crates where she’d dropped it, and held it out to her. She took it and turned it over in her hands without putting it on.

"So that’s Detonation," he said.

"That’s Detonation."

"And that counts as utility."

"It’s very useful," Abby said, and finally grinned.

The nest pack’s cores were the biggest Rain had seen all night. Each one sat in a cavity under the front plate, a lump of pale blue crystal as big as his fist. Some of the shells Abby had hit were so badly broken that the cores lay right out on the ice among the fragments, glowing faintly.

Rain worked through the bodies with the notched crate beside him. Most of the cores went into it, one after another, where Corwin could see them if he looked. Corwin was looking. Twice Rain glanced up and found Corwin’s eyes on him from across the ice.

But Corwin wasn’t watching the only thing worth watching, and neither was anyone else. Half of Odell’s crew was still staring at Abby, and the other half was staring at the cut lines in the ice. Rain knelt behind the biggest of the shells, with the body between himself and the rest of the floe, and slid a fist-sized core into storage.

[Item Stored: Shellback Core (Rank D, Large)]

He let the System look at it.

[Shellback Core (Rank D, Large): Valuation 250 Synthesis Credits]

He let out a slow breath.

Three more, from three different bodies, spaced out across ten minutes of work. Each time, he waited until Corwin had turned away. Each time, he put the next two into the crate in plain view.

[Items in Storage: Shellback Core (Rank D) x11, Shellback Core (Rank D, Large) x4]

He did the math twice. Eleven small cores came to twelve hundred and ten. Four large ones came to a thousand. Add the three twenty-seven he already had.

Twenty-five thirty-seven.

He stayed crouched behind the shell a moment longer than he needed to, his hands flat on the cold ice. Something in his chest let go that had been tight since Tuesday night.

’Thirty-seven credits to spare,’ he thought. ’Thirty-seven.’

Then he stood up and closed the crate.

The walk back took longer than the walk out. Toller was limping, and Odell was in no hurry. He went seam by seam, testing each one with his boot before he crossed, and twice he stopped and made everyone wait while he studied the light under the ice.

Peter walked between Rain and Abby with his two crates. Every few minutes he looked sideways at her, then looked away again quickly.

"You can ask," Abby said eventually.

"Ask what?"

"Whatever you keep almost asking."

Peter went red. "I wasn’t..."

"You were."

He walked for another ten steps. "Is that what everyone in Class A can do?"

"No," Abby said.

"Some of them?"

"A few." She thought about it. "Not like that. Different things. But a few of them, yes."

"And Rain wants to go to Class A," Peter said, as though he were reporting on a man who wanted to swim to the moon.

"I heard."

"With them."

"I heard, Peter."

Rain didn’t say anything. He was thinking about Corwin’s lash flipping a Shellback from four meters away, and Dax’s fist going through half a meter of ice, and Petrov’s panes covering holes nobody else had seen yet. That was C-rank. That was the level of the three people who had once left him in an alley. A month ago it would have killed him.

And then he thought about Abby going through nine of the biggest Shellbacks in the rift as if they were made of paper.

’So that’s the distance,’ he thought. ’That’s what’s between me and B.’

It should have scared him. Some of it did. But most of what he felt, walking across that dark lake with the cold in his teeth, was something closer to relief. Now he knew. Now there was an actual thing to measure himself against, instead of guessing.

He realized Abby was looking at him.

"You’re quiet," she said.

"I’m measuring."

"And?"

"Long way to go."

"Yes," she said, not unkindly. "There is." She bumped his shoulder lightly with hers as they walked. "But you’re not standing still, either."

"How would you know?"

"I watched you work tonight." She said it quietly enough that Peter couldn’t hear. "You took every core like you’d done it a hundred times. You never got close to a seam. And twice you knew a Shellback was coming before Odell called it. I saw your feet move."

He looked at her.

"So," she said. "The boss room."

"Afterward."

"This is afterward."

"After afterward."

"Rain."

"I’ll tell you," he said. "I promise. Not out here."

She studied his face for a long moment. Then she nodded once and looked ahead again.

They stopped for a last break two floes from the gate, on a slab of thick ice where the light underneath was steady. Odell’s crew sat down on their packs. Sasha handed Toller a canteen and helped him stretch out his bad hip.

Petrov walked over carrying a crate.

It was grey plastic, with a metal latch, identical to the one beside Rain’s boot. Petrov set it down next to the notched crate without a word and walked back to Corwin and Dax, who were standing apart from the others, watching.

Rain looked at the two crates side by side.

He looked across the ice at Odell, who was laughing at something Sasha had said, and at Toller, wincing as he flexed his leg. Odell had thanked Abby an hour ago. Sasha had looked at her the way you look at someone you want on your side. They’d spent the whole night fighting beside him.

They were tired. Odell’s crew had walked a long way across the ice, and they were close to the gate now, and they weren’t watching the crates. That was exactly how Reeve had said it would be.

’If I don’t do it,’ Rain thought, ’Corwin knows I’m no use to him. And then Peter gets put on the next one alone. And Peter can’t do this alone.’

He felt Abby’s eyes on him before he looked up.

She was sitting on her crate a few meters away. She wasn’t saying anything. She was watching his hands.

Rain held her eyes for a second.

Then he slid the notched crate behind the fake one with his boot, picked up the fake one, set it down where the notched crate had been, and sat back down on the real one.

It took four seconds. Nobody on Odell’s crew looked up.

Across the ice, Corwin nodded once.

Abby looked away. She kept looking away for the rest of the break.

The gate opened onto the loading bay of the cold-storage plant. Stepping through it was like stepping out of a freezer into a slightly warmer freezer. Rain’s ears popped. The concrete under his boots felt strange after hours on the ice.

Odell paid the carriers by the bay doors, a check folded into each hand. When he got to Abby, he held on to her money a second longer than necessary.

"If you ever want actual work," he said, "real work, not carrying, you find me. I’ll pay you what you’re worth."

"Thank you," Abby said. "I’m good."

"Nobody’s that good," Sasha said from behind him, and walked off toward the fence.

Corwin paid Abby last, outside on the gravel, with Dax and Petrov standing behind him.

"For the lifting," he said handing her the check.

"Thanks."

"See you around, Abby." He looked at her a moment longer than he looked at anybody else. Then he took the real crate from Rain, tucked it under one arm, and walked off into the dark toward the road, his crew falling in behind him.

Dax looked back once. Petrov looked back twice.

The three of them rode the train back to campus without saying much. Peter fell asleep against the window after two stops, his mouth open, his jacket zipped up to his chin.

Abby sat across from Rain with her elbows on her knees and stared at the floor for a long time.

"You did it," she said finally.

"Yeah."

"With them sitting right there."

"Yeah."

She was quiet for another stop.

"If I didn’t," Rain said, "they’d know I’m no use to them anymore. And then Peter goes in alone next time." He kept his voice low so it wouldn’t wake Peter. "I can’t let him go in alone."

Abby looked at Peter, asleep against the glass. Then back at Rain.

"I’m not going to pretend I liked watching it," she said.

"I didn’t like doing it."

"I know." She leaned back against the seat. "I could tell."

She didn’t say anything else until her stop. When the doors opened, she stood up, pulled her knit cap back down over her hair, and stopped in the doorway.

"Thank you for asking me," she said. "I mean it."

"Thank you for coming."

"Friday," she said. "Nine o’clock. Don’t be late."

The doors closed behind her.

C-12 was dark when he got back. He didn’t turn the light on. He sat down on the edge of his bed and opened the System.

He sold the small cores first, one at a time.

[Shellback Core (Rank D) sold: +110 Synthesis Credits]

He watched the number climb eleven times. Then the large ones, four times.

[Shellback Core (Rank D, Large) sold: +250 Synthesis Credits]

[Current Balance: 2,537 Synthesis Credits]

He switched to the Rotating Stock tab. The Shroud was still there.

[Resonance Shroud (Rank D, Consumable)]

[Cost: 2,500 Synthesis Credits]

[Listing Expires: 36:51:08]

[Purchase? Y/N]

He chose yes.

[Purchase Complete: Resonance Shroud (Rank D, Consumable)]

[Current Balance: 37 Synthesis Credits]

[Item added to Storage.]

Rain lay back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. For the first time since Tuesday, the weight on his chest was gone. He laughed once, quietly, into the dark.

’Thirty-seven credits,’ he thought. ’Rich.’

He was almost asleep when his phone buzzed.

He reached for it without looking, expecting Peter, and squinted at the screen.

It was from Corwin.

The message was a photograph. It was dark and grainy, taken from a distance on a phone held low, but it was clear enough. A girl standing alone on cracked ice with her hair blown loose around her face, steam rising around her, broken grey shells scattered across the ice at her feet.

Under it, a second message.

**Corwin:** Abigail Ratchford. Red Dragon.

**Corwin:** Her mom know where she was tonight?

Rain sat up very slowly in the dark.

His phone buzzed one more time.

**Corwin:** We should talk.